PDF version of International Accord

May 2017

International Accord

Collectively we aspire to strengthen and enhance the distributed, community-based open access infrastructure around the world.

Moreover, we acknowledge that strong relationships between regional and national repository networks are important, and that there are significant benefits of working together:

  • The development of value added services on top of global repositories requires the widespread, international adoption of common, open APIs and metadata standards.
  • Concentrating efforts at the regional and national level will ensure responsiveness to local needs and contexts, and prevents overlaps and cost redundancies.
  • Sharing metadata across regions ensures comprehensive, global data coverage.

To further our collective vision, we agree to collaborate in the following areas:

  • Regular communications: Facilitated by COAR, we will communicate regularly to exchange information, network with each other, and identify areas for potential collaboration. At least one in-person meeting will be organized annually to enable technical and strategic discussions.
  • Common APIs, standards, and protocols: Developing global services will involve the widespread interoperability and integration across data providers, and between data providers and network services. We will work together to define standards, APIs and
    protocols that will support a wide range of network services.
  • Technology transfer and co-development of technologies: Similar services and technologies are being envisioned and deployed by many networks. Instead of each region
    working in silos, we will look for opportunities to transfer technologies and co-develop
    software, where appropriate.

Signatories

Australasia                     Australasian Open Access Strategy Group
Canada                          Canadian Association of Research Libraries
China                             Confederation of Chinese Academic Institutional Repository and National Science Library, CAS
Europe                           OpenAIRE
Japan                             Japan Consortium for Open Access Repository
Latin America                 LA Referencia*
South Africa                   National Research Foundation
United States                 Association of Research Libraries† and Center for Open Science

 

*LA Referencia member countries are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru
† The Association of Research Libraries has members from both the United States and Canada