<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><font face="Arial" size="4">(Sorry for any cross posting)</font></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><b><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></b></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><b><font face="Arial" size="4">Major repository networks launch international group to improve interoperability</font></b></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4">Open access (OA) repositories are key components of the research infrastructure. They provide open access to the products of research and reflect an emerging commitment by research institutions towards the stewardship of the research outputs. Repositories are also becoming an important source of administrative information for governments, funding agencies and for tracking research outputs and assessing the impact of the research they support.</font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4">Science is an increasingly global, distributed and cross-disciplinary endeavor. Repository infrastructures, therefore, should mirror the needs of the research community and enable researchers, regardless of location or disciplinary practice, to access research outputs worldwide. All efforts should be made to avoid silos, which act as barriers to the usability of content.</font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4">Over the past several years, a number of regional and national OA repository networks have emerged. These networks have been developed to fulfill different requirements and they have adopted a variety of metadata standards and vocabularies. Greater interoperability across networks will improve discovery and enable the development of more sophisticated cross-repository services such as usage statistics or content analysis by text mining. In addition, a shared understanding and common approaches to vocabularies and metadata will help provide uniform information to governments and funding agencies about the products of funded research, and build confidence with users and stakeholders.</font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><span style="text-align: justify; ">This international, multi-stakeholder </span><span style="text-align: justify; ">working group will develop a strategy to ensure greater interoperability across repository networks as well as other platforms. The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) will be the convener of the working group, and CASRAI will facilitate the process of developing the strategy. Members of the working group will be representatives from major regional repository networks (e.g. La Referencia, OpenAIRE, SHARE and others) as well as EuroCRIS and CASRAI. Participants are committed to adopting any outcomes resulting from their work.</span></font></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4">In order to ensure input from all relevant stakeholders, a review circle will be formed to consult with the broader community at major milestones. The group will commence its work in Oct 2014 via a mix of teleconference and online collaboration tools.</font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><span style="text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><br></font></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; "><font face="Arial" size="4"><span style="text-align: justify; ">For more information, please visit the </span><a href="https://www.coar-repositories.org/activities/advocacy-leadership/working-group-global-interoperability-of-oa-repository-networks/">COAR website</a><span style="text-align: justify; "> or contact Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director of COAR: </span><a href="mailto:kathleen.shearer@coar-repositories.org" target="_blank" style="text-align: justify; color: purple; ">kathleen.shearer@coar-repositories.org</a></font></div></body></html>