The Academy of the State Customs Committee (ASCCA) was represented in summer school held at Ganja State University (GSU) within the framework of the Erasmus+ project called "Development of Research Potential through the Network of Institutional Repositories in Azerbaijan " (DIRNA).

Islam Huseynov, the head of the Department for the Organization of Educational and Methodological Work of the Academy, Elvin Mejidov, the ASCCA Manager of International Cooperation and Projects and Aysel Jafarzade, an employee of the Academy's library and a member of the project team, and Aslan Huseynov, a senior specialist in the Department of Application of ICT participated in the training. The training was attended by representatives of 7 higher educational institutions of our country, L'Aquila University of Italy, Jiveskül University of Finland (University of Jyväskylä) and Izmir Institute of High Technology of Turkiye.

The main objective of the event was to organize a comprehensive training course for the representatives of the beneficiary institutions of the project on advanced European, Turkish and other international systems, technologies and platforms used to ensure the global accessibility and dissemination of scientific research. In particular, the establishment of an Open Access Institutional Repository (IR) Network against the background of the creation and implementation of Open Science and Open Access concepts and policies in the beneficiary institutions was the focus of the training.

In the opening ceremony, the rector of GSU, academician Yusif Yusibov, and the rector of Khazar University Irada Khalilova spoke about the role of the DIRNA project in developing the research potential of higher education institutions and emphasized the importance of the trainings conducted within the project. Later, the guest speakers provided detailed information about the project and spoke about the role of partner universities in the project.

During the five-day training, representatives of European Universities made various presentations on topics such as “The Importance of Open Science and IRs”, “Digital Library Systems and their Role for Open Access: Transformative Agreements”, “FAIR Information & Research Data Management”, “Metadata Quality and OpenAIRE”, “Open Publishing Ethics, Copyright, Legal Issues”, “Technical Requirements and Features of Institutional Repositories”, etc.

The main outcome of the training, which consisted of theoretical and practical parts, was the demonstration of individual Open Science Policies prepared by the participants for the institutions they represented. Along with representatives of other universities, Academy

employee Elvin Mejidov presented the Open Science Policy prepared for ASCCA based on OpenAIRE international standards.

The beneficiary institutions of the Erasmus+ international consortium project funded by the European Union covering the years 2023-2026 in Azerbaijan are Khazar University (coordinator), Academy of the State Customs Committee, Baku State University, Azerbaijan Technical University, Ganja State University, Mingachevir State University, Lankaran State University and Nakhchivan State University apart from the three universities in Finland, Italy and Turkiye.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.