RECENT POSTS 
Slovenia’s Alenka Bratusek may become one of the six key commissioners in president-elect Jean-Claude Juncker’s team, heading the new portfolio on digital and innovation issues, according to an article in EurActiv.com. Bratusek was the first female prime minister in Slovenia (2013-2014) and holds a masters in social sciences from the University of Ljubljana. The new team would also include Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovkis for the Energy Union portofolio. Research and innovation may go to Spain’s Miguel Arias Cañete, according to the... Read more
A recent mess-up with an EU grant was a big setback for development in Croatia’s northern county, Međimurje, a leadership forum heard last week. There had been plans for the development of a knowledge centre within the building complex that already houses the Technology and Innovation Centre in Čakovec (TIC), which could have contributed to decentralised development and supported local people and entrepreneurship. Instead, poor management of the grant by Croatia’s central government meant the project did not get the... Read more
From UNESCO and Balkan School of Science Journalism: "The UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, Venice (Italy), is pleased to announce that the 2nd edition of the specialized South East European (SEE) regional workshop on science journalism will be conducted from 19 to 22 September 2014 in Podgorica, Montenegro, during the Open Science Festival. The relationship between science and society can be challenging. Linking science to society, improving public understanding of science and encouraging and attracting the... Read more
Academies of science and arts have a long history of being intertwined with political and religious issues, and this is perhaps nowhere as evident as in the troubled Balkans - the meeting place of Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim faiths, where many ethnicities lay claim to the land. I wrote about some of the issues surrounding science academies as proxies to nation-state building in Science a couple of years ago, when new Roma and Bosniak (Muslim) academies were being set up.... Read more
This story began as a report of a one-off case of potential predatory practice last month, and has escalated to an official call to disband an entire international editorial board, and an accusation against the editor of mass-scale nepotism and other publishing misconduct, reports Retraction Watch blog. The journal, Archives of Biological Sciences (ABS) is the official publication of the Serbian Biological Society, co-published by ten organisations in Serbia and Bosnia. It was accused (on June 12) on the Scholarly Open Access blog of accepting... Read more
The threat of invasion after World War II eventually brought the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden, closer together through the Nordic Council of Ministers. Now the region has the biggest air force in Europe and a GDP larger than Russia, according to Bertel Haarder, former Danish minister and member of the council, who was speaking at Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF2014) on 23 June. The political cooperation eventually yielded gains for research, too, with the establishment in... Read more
Several researchers based in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe have made it onto the “World's Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2014” list compiled by Thomson Reuters. Otherwise dominated by traditional science powerhouses such as the United States and the United Kingdom, the list also includes academics based in Poland (5), Hungary (3), Czech Republic (2), Serbia (2), Lithuania (1), Slovenia (1), and Slovakia (1). Some other scientists on the list originate from the region but are currently based abroad, such... Read more
Today marks the first anniversary of Croatia becoming the 28th member state of the European Union (EU) on 1 July 2013. Despite progress in science and a good performance in drawing on EU framework programme (FP7) grants, Croatia's research policy and funding landscape leaves much to be desired. The reforms have been slow to kick in and funding has been stagnating. I recently spoke about the challenges to Croatia's science with Tania Friederichs, policy officer for research and innovation relations... Read more
The Belarus government's plans to boost science funding "remain elusive", while basic research and the number of scientists are being eroded by the financial crisis, according to a recent recent report by the Belarusian Institute of System Analysis and Information Support of Scientific and Technical Sphere. The country's science could benefit from more international cooperation, from which much of the research funds come, but policies to boost such collaboration with key regional partners, such as the European Union, Commonwealth of... Read more
Georgia, a small country in the Caucasus, may see an increase in its science and statistical capacity if the pledges made today (27 June) in the Association Agreement signed between it and the European Union are fulfilled. The EU signed the agreements with Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, promising wide-ranging cooperation on science with Ukraine, for example. Chapter 12 in the part of the agreement with Georgia on 'Other cooperation policies' says the EU and Georgia "shall promote... Read more
