Watch the VIDEO. The number of new university presses is growing, and they are becoming a more influential phenomenon in the publishing world and in the realm of scholarly communications. These new university presses often challenge traditional scholarly publishing models with their focus on Open Science and open publishing practices. The University of Groningen Press (UGP), the Netherlands, is an example of such a publisher that tries to harmoniously connect the building blocks of Open Science and translate the lessons learned from one area into another. This session will outline our experience with setting up the newest UGP initiative, an open textbook publishing service, based on the expertise and lessons learned from the already well-established open access journals and open monographs publishing initiatives. By including open educational resources in the form of interactive open textbooks in its portfolio, the UGP is transitioning to being an all-around open publisher that enables cross-contamination and mutually fruitful exchange between different fields of Open Science, thus enhancing the synergy between them. Drawing on our experience from the (ongoing) open textbook pilot, we would like to demonstrate that a new university press could serve as a natural playground for connecting these building blocks of Open Science, thus allowing for a more sustainable transfer of know-how, better dissemination of knowledge, and closer engagement with the wider “open” agenda. Being an open-access publisher, the UGP offers a publishing platform for journals, books, series, and textbooks by university faculty and researchers. The open access publishing model enables any researcher, student, or interested reader around the world to find and access scholarly information without barriers. At the same time, the UGP’s publishing decisions are not dependent on the potential commercial success of a title but rest on scientific relevance, thus enhancing the academic and societal impact of such publications. This way, every scholar gets an opportunity to publish high-quality open monographs, articles, and lately also textbooks, thus contributing to wider dissemination of research and more equitable access to education. Along with other new university presses, the UGP has been reflecting and at times spearheading the changes in scholarly communication, research and education cultures. This includes the incorporation of Open Science practices supported by technical innovations. Transition to Open Science and greater uptake of open practices requires a shift in the academic and publishing culture that would be impossible without joint actions from all sides and without facilitating mutually beneficial exchanges within the open movement. As a result of this session, by turning to our open textbook publishing case study, we would like to spark a conversation around the role of new university presses in the greater Open Science framework as a space for connecting its multiple facets. Together with the audience, we hope to generate new ideas and solutions to potential challenges such initiatives face along the way.

Objective. In any given country, the national language and education not only help to impart knowledge but also broaden the horizons of students, teaching them to be more tolerant of different cultures. Today, the Ukrainian language as an important component of national identity and state building is one of the main goals of Russia in its war against Ukraine. That is why one of the main challenges for higher education in Ukraine during wartime is to create modern and high-quality educational materials in the national language as quickly as possible, in order to facilitate remote teaching, learning and research processes at universities. The mechanism for responding to this challenge is to turn to the experience of creating, adapting and using Open Educational Resources (OER) in Europe and the rest of the world. The aim of the study is to consider the practices of creating, adapting and using OER in European universities and libraries in the context of their benefits, including the possibilities of overcoming language barriers in times of crisis. Methods. This article is based on the analysis of the literature on OER practices in facilitating the overcoming of language barriers, on the activities of ENOEL, on the practices of librarians and educationalists of several European universities, as well as on self-reflection and direct experience of the circumstances of the war by Ukrainian librarians, who continue information support of the educational process. Results. The theoretical aspects and implemented practical solutions demonstrate that OER can be an effective solution in times of crisis (whether a pandemic or a war) to the issue of quality information support of distance education with materials in the national language in any country in Europe and the world. In the context of higher education in Ukraine, OER is a means and one of the methods of overcoming linguocide by the Russian Federation – the purposeful destruction of the Ukrainian language as the main feature of the ethnic group. The experience of working with OER of the USUST Scientific Library (Dnipro, Ukraine) is the story of a library that was looking for opportunities to answer its local challenges and resolve problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, and found solutions that became necessary during the war with Russia. Conclusions. The authors hope that Ukrainian-language OER will soon become a mandatory element in the cultural environment of Ukrainian universities. And it is OER that can help overcome Ukrainian linguocide in educational resources. The experience of librarians of the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL) proves that one of the most important roles in this is played by university librarians.