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<font size=3>[Forwarding from Dale Peters of DRIVER. --Peter
Suber.]<br><br>
<br>
PRESS RELEASE<br><br>
COAR establishes a global knowledge infrastructure <br><br>
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. <br><br>
“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.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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
(</font><a href="mailto:peters@sub.uni-goettingen.de">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>peters@sub.uni-goettingen.de</a></u>
</font><font size=3> CC:
</font><a href="file://lossau@sub.uni-goettingen.de">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>lossau@sub.uni-goettingen.de</a></u>
</font><font size=3>) <br><br>
</font><font face="Calibri" size=1>
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Dr D Peters<br>
Scientific Technical Manager DRIVER II<br>
State and University Library of Goettingen<br>
peters@sub.uni-goettingen.de<br>
Tel: +49 551 39 5242<br>
Fax: +49 551 39 5222<br>
Mobile:+49 (0)160 989 67663<br><br>
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http://www.driver-support.eu/en/<br><br>
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