Buenos Aires, 20 February 2012

The “Sistema Nacional de Repositorios Digitales” (SNRD), supported by the Argentinean Ministry of Science, Technology & Productive Innovation (MINCYT), has now started the development of a national network of digital repositories.

Silvia Nakano, MINCYT, comments: “With this new system, the visibility and impact of the Argentinean scientific and technical production will be greatly enhanced. The network will promote joint policies, coordinate action plans and set general standards.” Norbert Lossau, chair of the COAR Executive Board, notes: “We are delighted to see this Argentinean initiative taking off. It is an important step in building up a global e-infrastructure based on digital repositories. COAR supports repository communities around the world to become active and visible on an international scale.”

The main objectives of SNRD are to promote Open Access, the exchange of research through a national network of repositories, and interoperability of Argentinean repositories with other Latin American and international virtual networks.

Further information:

• [pdf] Letter by Silvia Nakano, MINCYT, Argentina, 16 February 2012
• [pdf] Statement of Support by COAR, 11 April 2011

COAR is delighted to sponsor the forthcoming SPARC Open Access Meeting that will take place in Kansas, March 11-13, 2012. The program includes a track for digital repositories. Kathleen Shearer, chair of COAR´s working group 1 will moderate the theme “Digital repositories – building a worldwide infrastructure alongside trust for authors and users ” focussing on interoperability and the integration of repositories in the e-research environment. The overall conference program, developed by librarians, publishers, analysts, scholars, and technologists from five countries, will consider developments across four topic areas such as national and institutional policy adoption, digital repositories, author rights and gold OA publishing. For more information please see

http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/oa12/oa12-program/index.shtml”.

SPARC is a partner of COAR. Both organizations share a common view that there are significant benefits for researchers and society to improving the visibility, dissemination, and reuse of research results.

“With this letter”, says Norbert Lossau, Chair of COAR Executive Board, “The Confederation of Open Access Repositories is joining in the growing protest against Elsevier’s practices opposing open access. We strongly believe that open access will greatly improve the impact and use of scholarly publications, and maximize our collective global investment in research.”

Open Letter to Elsevier

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) joins the research community in condemning Elsevier for its recent business practices and lobbying that undermine policies and activities promoting open access to scholarly literature. While many commercial publishers are working to adapt their business models to rising demands for open access, Elsevier has systematically acted to counter progress being made in the scholarly community towards this end.

One easy way of achieving open access is through the deposit of articles into online open access repositories. COAR strongly opposes the changes made by Elsevier to its article posting policies. These policies prohibit authors affiliated with institutions or agencies that have open access mandates to deposit copies of their articles into an open access repository unless their institution signs a very restrictive agreement with Elsevier. Despite their public commitment to “universal access”, Elsevier’s policies are greatly limiting access to scholarly literature.

These policies are in direct conflict with the objectives of COAR’s members and partners as well as the broader scholarly community, which aim to maximize access to and use of research literature. Therefore, COAR is discouraging its members and others from entering into agreements with Elsevier or other publishers that undermine open access mandates and intervene with already established and emerging author practices of article deposit.

COAR urges Elsevier to reconsider its prohibitive approach to open access and revise its policies to allow the deposit of research articles with minimum delay. We encourage publishers to work closely with the library and repository communities to develop effective and sustainable methods for article deposit that serve the needs of researchers, their institutions, and society as a whole. In addition, COAR welcomes like-minded organizations – such as licensing agencies, library consortia, etc. – to join us in developing and adopting best practice for policies and procedures regarding article deposit into open access repositories.

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories is a not-for-profit association of repository initiatives that aims to enhance visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of Open Access digital repositories. COAR represents over 80 institutions from 24 countries from throughout Europe, Latin America, Asia, and North America.

Norbert Lossau, Chair of the Executive Board, Confederation of Open Access Repositories

The full letter can be found here: [pdf] COAR open letter to Elsevier.

Spanish version of the letter

Japanese version of the letter

We are pleased to announce the release of the Spanish-language edition of Working Group 2’s interoperability briefing paper, “El Caso de Interoperabilidad para Repositorios de Accesso Abierto.” The Spanish and English versions are publicly available on the COAR website at:  http://www.coar-repositories.org/working-groups/repository-interoperability/coar-interoperability-project/a-case-for-interoperability/

This translation has been provided within the framework of COAR Latin America’s regional activities. We are especially grateful to Malgorzata Lisowska, Director of the Library of Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. We hope this will be the first of many such COAR publications to be translated into other languages.

Nos complace anunciar la publicación de la versión española del documento informativo del Grupo de Trabajo 2 de COAR sobre la interoperabilidad, “El caso de interoperabilidad para repositorios de acceso abierto”. Las versiones en español e inglés están ahora disponibles en la página web de COAR en: http://www.coar-repositories.org/working-groups/repository-interoperability/coar-interoperability-project/a-case-for-interoperability/

Esta traducción ha sido proporcionada en el marco de las actividades regionales de COAR Latinoamérica. Un agradecimiento especial a Margarita Lisowska, Directora de la Biblioteca de la Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. Esperamos que esta sea la primera de muchas publicaciones de COAR traducidas a otros idiomas.

Dear members and partners of COAR,

2011 has been an eventful year for COAR Executive Board, office, members and partners. One of the main highlights of this year was initiating our collaboration with Open Access initiatives in Latin America and signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the regional organization CLARA. In Europe we are working on joining forces with important regional players and cooperating with LIBER. Further initial contacts to other regions are being established and we very much hope to create an interesting and truly international network in the coming months.

On behalf of the COAR Executive Board and COAR Office, we would like to thank you for all your support during the past months and look forward to continuing to establish stronger repository infrastructures and exchanges with you in 2012.

COAR Executive Board and COAR Office wish you Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year!

To celebrate Open Access Week , the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is hosting an open online forum related to global challenges of repository interoperability.

The open discussion is designed to gather input about current and anticipated challenges related to interoperability for OA repositories.

New topics for discussion: 

• Repository Interoperability and NGOs, IGOs, Non-Profit Organizations, and Research Funding Agencies
• Regional Issues for: Latin America, Africa, India and Asia
• Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Data, Open Science and Related Issues for Interoperability
• If I only knew then what I know now — advice to give new repository managers
• The interoperability resources you can’t live without
• What is being taught about interoperability in graduate school curricula?

Continued topics for discussion: 

• What are the major technical issues and challenges regarding interoperability for OA repositories that need to be addressed?
• What are the major organizational challenges related to global interoperability for OA repositories?

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is facilitating a discussion about interoperability among Open Access repositories within the global context. To kick off this process, COAR has released a briefing paper, “The Case for Interoperability for Open Access Repositories,” an overview of interoperability and selected current issues. The paper is available on the COAR Interoperability Project web site.

The next step is to collect and analyze stakeholder input about the current interoperability environment. We invite you to participate and submit your thoughts about current and anticipated interoperability challenges, problems for the research community that might be addressed by interoperability guidelines, barriers to progress, and other related issues. Questions to start the dialogue are posted on the COAR Interoperability Project web site..

We encourage participants to raise new questions, respond to the posted questions, and respond to others’ comments.

The discussion will be available on the COAR web site until approximately 22-October 2011. After that, we will review input and define and draft the COAR Roadmap for Global Open Access Repository Interoperability (estimated timeframe: 4th quarter 2011, 1st quarter 2012).

We hope to have a lively discussion!

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is pleased to announce publication of the briefing, "The Case for Interoperability for Open Access Repositories."

The paper is available on the COAR Interoperability Project web site.

Abstract:

Open Access repositories, whose number has been steadily rising, are an important component of the global e-Research infrastructure. The real value of repositories lies in the potential to interconnect them to create a network of repositories, a network that can provide unified access to research outputs and be (re-) used by machines and researchers. However, in order to achieve this potential, we need interoperability. The purpose of this paper is to provide a high-level overview of interoperability of Open Access repositories, identify the major issues and challenges that need to be addressed, stimulate the engagement of the repository community and launch a process that will lead to the establishment of a COAR roadmap for repository interoperability.