COAR is an international association with 156 members and partners from around the world representing libraries, universities, research institutions, government funders and others. COAR brings together individual repositories and repository networks in order to build capacity, align policies and practices, and act as a global voice for the repository community.
Our Vision
A sustainable, inclusive and trusted global knowledge commons based on a network of open access digital repositories
Our Mission
To enhance the visibility and application of research outputs through collaboration across the global repository network
Our History
Building a truly global network
COAR evolved out of a project to connect European repositories called DRIVER. This project revealed the need for a more international approach that would support the networking of all repositories from around the world. Thus COAR was founded in September 2009 with 28 members. Since then COAR has greatly expanded its international reach with over 150 members and partners from over 50 countries on all 5 continents.
Executive Board
COAR Executive Board, 2021-2024
Executive Director
Kathleen Shearer has been the Executive Director of COAR since 2013 and has been working in the area of open access, open science, scholarly communications, and research data management for over 15 years. She is based in Montreal, Canada and participates in numerous other organizations to advance open science around the world. She is the author of numerous publications and delivered many presentations at international events. Most recently, she was the lead author of the paper Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action (April 2020) and presented the keynote speech at the Open Repositories Conference in June 2020. Shearer is also a Research Associate with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and has been instrumental in many of CARL’s activities related to open science, including the launch of the Portage Initiative in Canada, a national research data management network.
Annual Reports
Each year, COAR publishes an Annual Report that contains information about all the associations’ activities and accomplishments.
COAR Annual Report 2022-2023
COAR Annual Report 2021-2022
COAR Annual Report 2020-2021
