----- Forwarded Message ----
From: "Peters, Dale"
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Sent: Wed, 28 October, 2009 20:49:40
Subject: COAR establishes a global knowledge infrastructure
PRESS RELEASE
COAR establishes a global knowledge infrastructure
The international Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) was launched in Ghent on 21 October, during Open Access Week 2009. The aim of the organisation is the networking of over 1000 global scientific repositories comprising peer reviewed publications under the principle of Open Access. This will be achieved by means of common data standards and the co-ordination of scientific research policy development. Coinciding with the sixth anniversary of the Berlin Declaration to provide free and unrestricted access to sciences and human knowledge representation worldwide, COAR takes responsibility for the execution of this vision in bringing together scientific repositories in a wider organisational infrastructure to link confederations across continents and around the globe in support of new models of scholarly communication.
“The networking of online publications and research data sets will open new opportunities for research and the teaching of all disciplines in the 21st century”, said the founding Chairperson, Dr Norbert Lossau, Director of the State and University Library of Goettingen, emphasising the significance of COAR. “As proven managers of information, libraries are working hand in hand with information specialists, computer scientists and researchers to lend reality to a world-wide network of scientific repositories.”
COAR emerged from the European DRIVER project, (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research), funded by the EU Commission under the 6th and 7th Framework Programmes for e-Infrastructures. Among the 28 founding members of COAR, 23 organisations are based in 13 European countries; others in China (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Japan (National Institute of Informatics and the Digital Repository Federation), Canada (Canadian Association of Research Libraries) and the USA (University of Arizona for the Global Registries Initiative). As the membership continues to grow, interest in COAR is reflected in numerous related organisations, such as the SURF Foundation, JISC, SPARC Europe and eIFL.net, as well as OCLC and Microsoft Research, all of whom support of a common strategic objective to make research findings freely accessible to science and society.
The early bird membership fee of EURO 100 is valid until 31 December 2009, open to not-for-profit organisations engaged in higher education, as well as individuals who support the aims of the Association. To register your own interest in becoming a member of COAR, please contact Dr Dale Peters (peters@sub.uni-goettingen.deCC:lossau@sub.uni-goettingen.de)
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Dr D Peters
Scientific Technical Manager DRIVER II
State and University Library of Goettingen
peters@sub.uni-goettingen.de
Tel: +49 551 39 5242
Fax: +49 551 39 5222
Mobile:+49 (0)160 989 67663
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http://www.driver-repository.eu/
http://www.driver-support.eu/en/
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