Blog post by Mariana Harjevschi
The recent adoption of the Regulation on Open Science in the Republic of Moldova marks an important milestone in the modernisation of the national research system and is a positive step for the academic and research community. By requiring open access to publicly funded research, the development of research data management plans, the use of institutional repositories, and adherence to FAIR principles, Moldova continues to align itself with European Union policies and international Open Science standards.
Grounded in the vision of the National Development Strategy “European Moldova 2030”, the country’s overarching reform agenda, this Regulation is based on a clear and powerful principle: knowledge generated with public funding should be freely accessible to the public. Yet whether the framework goes far enough to secure its own ambitions is a question worth asking.
From Principle to Obligation: What the Regulation Requires
The Regulation introduces several important advances that strengthen the accessibility and impact of publicly funded research. It establishes open access as the default approach for scientific publications, requiring researchers and institutions to deposit their works in trusted repositories, defined by the Regulation as open-access digital archives.
It also offers a helpful definition of Open Science as the set of methods and mechanisms through which the results of research and innovation activities are produced, managed, and disseminated in a transparent, accessible, and reusable manner, for the benefit of the scientific community and society as a whole.
The Regulation introduces concrete obligations in four substantive areas: open access to scientific publications, research data management, research integrity and evaluation, and institutional responsibilities.
On publications, it establishes open access as the default for publicly funded research. Authors and their institutions must self-archive their work in trusted institutional or national repositories, with embargo periods capped and licensing principles clearly set. Public journals must let authors retain copyright, taking only non-exclusive publishing rights, and authors publishing abroad are required to prioritise open-access venues and notify their funder before signing agreements that fall short. Limited exceptions apply for intellectual property protection, national security, and pre-existing contractual obligations.
On research data, the Regulation aligns Moldovan practice with the FAIR principles. It requires a data management plan for every publicly funded project, setting out how data is collected, documented, stored, shared, preserved, and reused. It requires a data management plan for every publicly funded project, setting out how data is collected, documented, stored, shared, and preserved.
On integrity and evaluation, the framework ties compliance with Open Science principles to research ethics, reproducibility standards, and institutional evaluation systems. It encourages transparent peer review, integrates Open Science indicators into performance assessment, and broadens science’s societal role through citizen participation.
On institutional responsibilities, the Regulation assigns coordination duties to the Ministry of Education and Research, requires research organisations to maintain the repository infrastructure that makes open access possible, requires funders to build compliance into contracts, and sets out graduated corrective measures for non-compliance, including a prohibition on the use of public funds to pay hybrid journal fees.
The Reach and Limits of Open Access Under the Regulation
As indicated above, Article 9 of the Regulation establishes that scientific publications resulting from publicly or partially funded research must be made openly accessible, primarily through self-archiving in trusted institutional or national repositories. This is generally permitted and encouraged by the Law No. 230/2022 on Copyright and Related Rights.
According to Article 11 of the Regulation, embargo periods on public access to manuscripts are permitted but strictly limited in time. The embargo may not exceed six months for publications in the natural, engineering, and medical sciences, and twelve months for publications in the social sciences and humanities, calculated from the date of publication. If a publishing agreement requires a longer embargo period, the recipient of public funding must notify the funder before signing the publishing contract and request a justified derogation. This approach aims to maximise public access to publicly funded research while allowing limited accommodation of publishers’ requirements and other legitimate considerations.
However, access is not absolute. The Regulation explicitly allows exceptions to this in specific cases (Article 12), including the protection of intellectual property when patent applications are planned, national security or sensitive information concerns, and contractual limitations arising from international collaborations. In such cases, publication may be delayed or partially restricted, with outcomes ranging from full access to metadata-only records to redacted public versions. These exceptions ensure compliance with legal, strategic, and contractual obligations, but they risk reducing the openness of published research.
The Regulation moreover also defines licensing principles. Publications and metadata deposited in repositories are generally shared under open licenses such as CC BY or equivalent, enabling reuse with attribution or, in some cases, unrestricted reuse. At the same time, authors retain copyright, and repositories do not impose licenses in the absence of explicit author decisions. This creates a balance between openness and author control, but it can also generate ambiguity when licensing is not clearly specified.
Furthermore, the Regulation also extends to research data management. It requires systematic data management plans for all publicly funded projects, defining how data is collected, stored, protected, shared, and archived. Data must be deposited in recognised repositories with persistent identifiers (such as DOI) and standardised metadata, to facilitate long-term access. Certain exceptions apply for personal data, confidential material, environmental or heritage risks, and large datasets requiring controlled access.
Beyond technical provisions, the framework integrates open science principles into research integrity and evaluation systems. It promotes transparency in peer review, strengthens ethical obligations, and links evaluation criteria to openness and reproducibility. Institutions are expected to enforce compliance while also encouraging citizen participation in research activities, broadening the societal role of science.
As part of the Regulation, the Ministry of Education and Research is committed to developing or designating a National Scientific Data Repository. This will need to be integrated into the national data infrastructure and connected to relevant European research data networks. Repositories are required to implement standard interoperability protocols and comply with the OpenAIRE Guidelines 4.0. The Ministry is expected to develop a guideline on recommended formats and standards for metadata and research data, aligned with international best practices and the recommendations of the European Open Science Cloud.
In turn, public law organisations in the fields of research and innovation, as well as bodies involved in the evaluation of researchers (including the National Agency for Quality Assurance in Education and Research, the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, competition committees, and academic promotion committees), are obliged to align scientific performance evaluation criteria with Open Science principles.
The Agency is also expected to set criteria for promoting Open Access into its regulations governing the classification of scientific journals and scholarly events.
Building on the Regulation: The Road to a Secondary Publication Right
The Moldovan Open Science Regulation represents a substantial achievement and establishes a strong framework for open access, research data sharing, and institutional responsibility. Nevertheless, the Regulation relies heavily on the rights that authors can retain when publishing.
For this reason, future amendments to the Law on Copyright and Related Rights could consider introducing a harmonised Secondary Publication Right, without embargo periods. Such a measure would provide legal certainty for researchers, strengthen the Regulation’s implementation, and ensure that publicly funded research remains a public good rather than privatised behind commercial paywalls.
Open Science requires not only repositories and policies, but also legal mechanisms that guarantee researchers retain the right to share the knowledge they create for the benefit of society.
17 July 2026
