Introduction about the HRČAK project and portal

Hrčak is a central portal that brings together Croatian scientific and professional journals that offer open access to their works in one place.

It allows users to easily find journals and papers by sorting (by alphabet or by field of science) or searching by various fields.
Hrčak offers magazine editors a tool with which they can publish their magazine in electronic form for free and easily, or add the possibility of finding and searching to an existing electronic magazine and increase its visibility and influence.
Through the OAI-PMH protocol, Hrčak offers metadata about each journal and each article created according to the Dublin Core standard to all interested information services.

The rights and obligations of magazine editors, publishers, magazine administrators, authors, users and Src, as well as the tasks and working methods of the Council of Hrčak, are defined by the Regulations of the Portal of Croatian Scientific and Professional Journals – Hrčak .

This portal was created with the support of the then Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (today’s Ministry of Science and Education), it was realized in Src, and the basic idea came from the Croatian Information and Documentation Society.

Hrčak was publicly presented for the first time on February 7, 2006, when a workshop was held in Src for the first group of editors and editorial staff of Croatian scientific journals. At the workshop, the editors received access data, after which they started publishing their magazines in Hrčko.

Members of the first project team from Src: Miroslav Milinović (leader), Draženko Celjak, Nino Katić and Nebojša Topolšćak.
Members of the first project team from HID: Tibor Toth, Mirjana Mihalić, Jadranka Stojanovski and Iva Melinščak Zlodi.

Similar projects in the world:
– INASP Journal Publishing System

Information for magazine editors

Hrčak is a tool that can help any editorial office of a scientific or professional journal to publish its journal in electronic form or to increase the visibility and presence of an existing electronic journal in the domestic and international scientific public.

How can Hrčak help you if you are the editor of a magazine that…

… does not have an electronic edition and is published only in printed form?
Hrčak provides you with a tool that will allow you to create an electronic edition of your journal for free, quickly and easily: with all information about the journal, the contents of current issues and a bibliographic description and a link to the full text of each paper. If you wish, you can also enter an archive of old numbers. You only need files of your works in pdf (or some other format) which you can probably get from the publisher or printer.

… there are web pages with only basic information about the magazine or an electronic edition with the contents of individual issues?
Using Hrčko, you can build a complete electronic edition of the magazine, with the contents of individual issues and complete texts available online, bibliographically described and searchable. You can continue to keep the existing online pages of the magazine on your own server, or you can also enter this data into the central portal on the Srca server.

… has an electronic edition with the contents of individual issues and complete texts available?
If you already have an electronic journal with complete works available online, you will decide for yourself whether you are satisfied with the existing edition or whether you think that Hrčak would be a better solution for your journal. The advantages offered by participating in a central portal compared to the publication of an individual magazine are: easier promotion and greater visibility by potential users, and easier inclusion in search engines and other domestic and international online services. Hrčak also offers the possibility to search for works within the journal by author, title, keywords and other description fields.
Editorial offices can decide to continue with the current online edition on their own servers and at the same time participate in the Hrčak portal.
For magazines that offer complete texts only to their subscribers, Hrčak will not provide procedures for authorization and control of access to complete texts.

All interested editors can contact: hrcak@srce.hr.

For end users

The Hrčak portal is a central point that allows viewing and searching the contents of domestic scientific and professional journals that have offered their content through the concept of open access.

It is possible to find individual works in journals with a simple search based on basic bibliographic data, or to choose an advanced search with many more options for a targeted search, or to simply browse the contents of journals by alphabetical list of journal titles or by scientific fields.

The user can also register and receive information about new editions of selected or all magazines through the registered electronic address.

Use of HRČKA is free.

What is open access?

According to the definition provided by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) from 2002, “open access” to scientific literature means “free availability on the public Internet, with the fact that users are allowed to read, download, reproduce, distribute . own works, as well as the right to quote them in the correct way.” It should also be emphasized that “open access” is required only for scientific literature that the authors normally publish, that is, make it available to publishers and readers without any monetary compensation. These are primarily peer-reviewed papers from scientific journals, papers in proceedings, but also all non-peer-reviewed papers that scientists want to make available online.
In order to achieve open access to all scientific literature, two complementary strategies are proposed:
I. Self-archiving and building a network of institutional or disciplinary repositories of scientific works;
II. Creating new open access journals or converting old subscription journals to open access.

More information:
– Open access to scientific information – HID working group
– Berlin Declaration on open access to scientific knowledge (translation into Croatian)

What is an open access journal?

An open access journal (OA journal) is a journal that offers all its complete works online, without delay, and does not charge either readers or their institutions for this. Instead of subscriptions, open access journals use other financing models – they cover their costs with donations from sponsors (governments, ministries, various agencies), funds from professional and scientific associations or universities, profits from advertisements or fees paid by authors for publishing their texts. It is also possible for a journal to sell its print edition, but allow open access to the online version.

The most comprehensive list of open access journals can be found here:
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)