Prof. Desislava Paneva-Marinova, PhD and Assist. Prof. Maxim Goynov, PhD were awarded the First Prize of the Ministry of Education and Science “ORBIT” 2025 for their overall contribution to Open science

On November 10, 2025, at a special ceremony at the Ministry of Education and Science, the First Prize of the Ministry of Education and Science for overall contribution to open science “ORBIT” 2025 was awarded to a research team from the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, BAS (IMI-BAS), Prof. Desislava Paneva-Marinova, PhD, and Assist. Prof. Maxim Goynov, PhD, for the development and implementation of Open access digital libraries for scientific, educational, and public institutions in Bulgaria. The award was presented by the Deputy Minister of Education and Science, Acad. Nikolay Vitanov.

Prof. Paneva-Marinova expressed her gratitude to the Ministry of Education and Science for its long-standing financial support for the e-infrastructure CLaDA-BG (part of the National Roadmap for Scientific Infrastructure), within which the CultIS core of the presented digital libraries is being built and developed. She also expressed her gratitude to the teams from the University Library of Sofia University and the National Statistical Institute for their fruitful cooperation in building complete digital libraries with Open access to scientific information, the management of the Institute of IMI-BAS for its long-standing support for Open access initiatives and projects, including BulDML, OpenAIRE, OpenAIRE+, etc., as well as Prof. Petar Stanchev, doyen of Open science in Bulgaria, for his help and advice along the long road that led the team to its current success.

In 2024-2025, the team developed and implemented digital libraries for the University Library of Sofia University (accessible here), the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, BAS (BulDML, accessible here), the National Statistical Institute (accessible here), and others.

The ceremony was attended by the deputy director of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Hristo Kostadinov, representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Orbit project, the scientific community, and others.

Photos: Ministry of Education and Science