Welcoming Patricia Muñoz as President of LA Referencia
Patricia Muñoz, Director of the Scientific Information Program at CONICYT – Chile, was elected President during the LA Referencia Council Meeting in September 2016. She is the first President of LA Referencia and will help to advance the strategic directions of the Latin American repository network. COAR looks forward to working closely with Patricia, along with other council members and Executive Secretary, Alberto Cabezas as we continue the work of aligning repository networks and raising the visibility of repositories around the world. Other issues discussed at the Council meeting were the development of common metadata guidelines in Latin America for datasets, continued collaboration with OpenAIRE and COAR, and metadata exchange with OpenAIRE and SHARE.

Second Ibero-American Meeting of Ministers and High Authorities of Science, Technology and Innovation support Open Access Repositories.
The Second Ibero-American Meeting of Ministers and High Authorities of Science, Technology and Innovation was held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia on October 6-7, 2016. This meeting, attended by Patricia Muñoz, President of LA Referencia, defined a number of strategic activities and agendas to strengthen cooperation in Ibero-American policies in science, technology and  innovation. A key outcome of this meeting was to promote greater collaboration between repository networks in the region in order to reinforce open access.
(my translation – original text is available here: http://bit.ly/2dGQzqg)

Bianca Amaro, from IBICT, receives award for her contribution to Open Access
On Wednesday, September 28, Bianca Amaro, coordinator of the Program of Open Access to Scientific Information of the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT), received the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development Award. The award is given to individuals who have made a significant contribution to the progress of Open Access in the developing world. The award ceremony took place at the event that commemorated the International Day of Universal Access to Information in Rio de Janeiro.

More information is available here: http://lareferencia.redclara.net/rfr/