Preprints in Generalist Repositories

As open scholarship practices grow, dedicated preprint servers are springing up in many disciplines. However, researchers are also depositing preprints in other platforms, including institutional and generalist repositories. These destinations can be familiar to researchers and well-integrated into the scholarly communications infrastructure, but many do not presently offer the same preprint-related features found in purpose-built servers. The outcome of working group was a set of good practice recommendations for the management of preprints in repositories in generalist and institutional repositories published in Devember 2022. Read the recommendations

Open Metrics

The aim of this group was to identify new approaches and services for measuring impact both at the technical and organizational level in order to give an overview of the current landscape for (open) metrics for repository managers. The group focused on exchanging information and experience on the topic of open metrics.

Repository Interoperability

This group has been subsumed by several other groups that deal with specific issues of interoperability including Controlled Vocabularies, Metadata and NGR

Interoperability is the technical “glue” that makes possible an emerging open science infrastructure – an infrastructure that connects a global, distributed network of repositories and other tools. While technology exists to make possible this integration, the landscape around interoperability is complex, and continually evolving.

COAR has been working on issues of interoperability since its inception in 2009, beginning with the COAR Interoperability Project, which has produced a number of outputs that make the case for interoperability across repositories and with other systems and outline the priorities for repository interoperability in the future.

Completed work and publications

Librarians’ Competencies for E-Research and Scholarly Communication

The aim of the Task Force was to produce a number of competency profiles that will help to build capacity in libraries for supporting new roles in the area of scholarly communication and e-research. The profiles will enable library managers to identify skill gaps in their institution, form the basis of job descriptions, enable professionals to carry out self-assessments, and act as a foundation for the development of training programs for librarians and library professionals. In addition, the toolkit will provide an outline of new organizational models that are evolving in this dynamic environment.

Completed work and publications

  • Time to Adopt: Librarians’ New Skills and Competency Profiles (2016) by Birgit Schmidt, Pascal Calarco, Iryna Kuchma and Kathleen Shearer: On the one hand, libraries are at the forefront of the digital transformation and digital information infrastructures, on the other, they manage and curate cultural heritage collections. This brings about new ways of engagement with information and knowledge and the need to rethink skills and competency profiles – which enable librarians to support e-research all along the research cycle. This paper presents findings of the joint Task Force on Librarians’ Competencies in Support of E-Research and Scholarly Communication.
  • Librarians’ Competencies for Research Data Management (2016) by Birgit Schmidt and Kathleen Shearer: Research data management encompasses a wide array of activities across the research data lifecycle. Generally, it requires a high level of interaction with researchers and also working with other support services including technical services and research officers.
  • Librarians’ Competencies for Scholarly Communication and Open Access (2016) by Kathleen Shearer and Birgit Schmidt: Library activities in scholarly communication and open access typically fall into one of four categories: scholarly publishing services; open access repository services; for copyright and open access advice; and assessment of scholarly resources.

Open Access Agreements and Licenses

The task force served between 2012 and 2015.

Research institutions and consortia are adopting methods to support open access repositories in the context of their licensing agreements with publishers. These agreements currently take the form of:

Completed work and publications