From: Kathleen Shearer <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 12:05:31 -0400

Sorry for the cross posting.

I am forwarding you a blog post
<https://www.coar-repositories.org/news-media/coar-annual-meeting-and-new-executive-board/>
about the COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories) meeting last
week. It was a significant step forward in our efforts to build a global
knowledge commons.

Last week, the COAR Annual Meeting took place from May 14-17, 2018 in
Hamburg, Germany. The meeting was filled to capacity and, with
representatives from 30 countries, was the most diverse COAR meeting to
date. It offered an opportunity for COAR to take stock of the current
status of the work being done to build a global knowledge commons through
strengthening and connecting next generation repositories across the world.

Meeting participants were taken on a (virtual) world tour of the open
science landscape from Australia – through South Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan
– to the European Union and Russia – through the nine Latin American
countries participating in LA Referencia – through Canada and the US – and
to Asia via China, South Korea and Japan. While there is significant
diversity in approaches across these regions and countries, we also share
much in common and have many similar challenges.

The critical components for building the knowledge commons were discussed
intensively. In particular, the issue of how we can reflect local needs
while still supporting the global nature of research through a distributed,
networked system. Efforts are progressing towards the widespread adoption
of next generation repositories and there is significant interest by the
repository platforms to implement the technological recommendations, as
well as the national and regional networks to support new functionality
that will enable social networking, annotation and peer review and common
usage statistics across our systems. It was agreed that we need to support
the adoption of common standards, data sharing, and strengthening
communities of practice at the local, national and regional levels.

Breaking down geographical silos will be critical for the commons, but
there are other silos that need to be addressed as well. We envision an
integrated, international ecosystem that bridges the disparate worlds of
data, publications, and other valuable research outputs. In his opening
talk, Klaus Tochtermann, Director of ZBW Leibniz Information Center for
Economics, discussed the intersections between the COAR next generation
repositories concept and another parallel effort in Europe to build an Open
Science Cloud. He pointed out that while our principles and aims are very
well aligned, there has not been much interaction between these two
initiatives and we need to develop better ways to engage. Working together
on the implementation of the FAIR principles may offer just such an
opportunity.

As we aim to define the technological requirements for the knowledge
commons, we are also aware that the social aspects are extremely important
and present us with a grand challenge. Jean-Claude Guédon, Professor at the
Université de Montreal and respected open access advocate, urged us to
consider two important principles within our repository network:
intellectual proximity and problem solving complementarity. These
principles will act as the social glue to tie our repositories together and
only when we adhere to these principles, he says, can we offer a viable
option for the research community. Demonstrating this value to research
communities and supporting intellectual dialogue on top of our collective
content will be a priority for us in the coming years.


During the meeting, there was an announcement about the Swedish consortium,
BIBSAM’s move to cancel their national license for access to Elsevier
journals. This came as a striking reminder of why we are building a
knowledge commons. Journal prices are at an all-time high, and the large
commercial publishers have little incentive to innovate. This has created
an extremely flawed system that is propped up through our over reliance on
journal based impact measures to evaluate research, measures that are in
large part defined and controlled by the commercial publishers themselves.
Is it time to radically reimagine the system so that it better serves the
academy and our societies?

At the organizational level, I am pleased to announce a new and expanded
Executive Board that was elected during our General Assembly. Four members
will remain for a second term, providing continuity from previous years,
while four new members will bring us fresh perspectives and wider regional
representation. There are now board members from Africa, Asia, Europe,
North America and South America (see the picture below).

I left this meeting with renewed energy and great enthusiasm for pursuing
the many great ideas that surfaced during our discussions. Thanks again to
the COAR community for their engagement and participation, and to our
partners for their financial and organizational support: Leibniz
Information Centre for Economics, Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, OpenAIRE,
SPARC North America, and the University of Alberta Libraries. All the
presentations are now available on the COAR website.

If you have comments or question, please feel to get in touch.

All the best,

Kathleen Shearer, COAR Executive Director