From the Confederation of Open Access Repositories:
The COAR Annual Meeting and General Assembly took place last week virtually from September 29 – October 1, 2021. It was attended by over 160 people and offered a great opportunity to consult and discuss current COAR initiatives and priorities with members and partners.
The meeting began with a presentation from Dr. Ana Peršić, who introduced the UNESCO draft Open Science Recommendations, explained how they were developed, and presented UNESCO’s plans for their dissemination. COAR strongly supports the recommendations and has been an active partner in their development. An important next step after they are ratified in November will be to translate these very high level recommendations into concrete actions related to policy adoption and infrastructure development, something COAR is eager to assist with.
Other sessions included a round table of representatives from Latin America, Africa, United States, Canada, Asia, Europe who presented their activities related to the COAR Strategy for Modernizing Repositories. The strategy involves working with regional and national groups to develop specialized plans to strengthen repository operations in each jurisdiction and help position them to play a more expansive role in the scholarly communications landscape, as outlined in the Next Generation Repository vision.
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The General Assembly, which was held on Friday, October 8, elected a new Executive Board for the 2021-2024 term. Martha Whitehead, Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian was elected as Chairperson taking the place of Eloy Rodrigues, who stepped down after 6 years in the position. Other members of the new Executive Board are Kazu Yamaji, (Vice-Chairperson), William Nixon, (Treasurer), Bianca Amaro, Virginia Barbour, Isabel Bernal, Iryna Kuchma, and Omo Oaiya. With members from Africa, Australia, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the United Kingdom and the United States, this will be the most geographically diverse Executive Board to date, reflecting the international nature of the COAR membership.
“As we continue to advance the COAR vision of a global knowledge commons and enhance the role of repositories, I am delighted to be working with such knowledgeable colleagues, each of whom will bring their unique perspectives to the organization”, says Martha Whitehead.
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