Confederation for European Digital 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 DRIVER Confederation of European Digital Repositories aims to foster a rich data-layer for the European Research Area that enables the sharing and re-use of scholarly information such as publications, primary data or educational material. It should involve representatives of academic institutions that host scientific digital repositories, i.e. universities as well as research centres, and representatives of national, regional or subject-based federations. As an overall goal, DRIVER proposes a European federation of federations – a Confederation – in order to foster synergies between existing federations, overcome shortcomings of a simple point-to-point network and stimulate the building of federations of digital repositories in countries where these do not yet exist. The DRIVER Confederation represents a network of content providers including the forerunners of the European repository movement, oriented not only geographically, but also characterised by disciplinary and technological leadership. Many of the results from the DRIVER test-bed and the DRIVER studies indicate the need to extend the DRIVER Confederation to assist those countries without developed national structures. The strategic development of the DRIVER Confederation is supported by the organisational principles that structure the repository landscape. The wider dynamic of the Confederation lies in the implementation of a sustainable organisational model - by inclusion of affiliated models of partnership and identified areas of support emerging from within non-governmental organisations (NGO's), and commercial and private initiatives that have grown to serve the repository community. The Confederation advances the current status of DRIVER from a test-bed project to a fully functional organisation. It ensures the controlled geographical and thematic extension of the repository platform, the uptake of DRIVER technology and the close correspondence between the DRIVER infrastructure and established communities of practice. The Confederation thus provides an integrated concept for organisation, technology and content for the European Open Access repository landscape, in a virtual structure that is independent from the DRIVER project activities. Open Access repositories have revolutionised access to research materials. Open Access offers significant advantages for individual authors, for researchers, for institutions and for the process of research generally by freeing up the process of dissemination. By making research material Open Access it means that number of readers increases and thereby citations to the article - in some fields increasing citations by 300%. Open Access repositories can hold digital duplicates of published articles and make them freely available. The development of digital repositories across Europe has gathered momentum in recent years and continues. For more information about Open Access and digital repositories visit www.driver-support.eu/oa and on developments in Europe visit www.driver-support.eu/national/countries on the DRIVER Support pages. http://www.driver-repository.eu/DRIVER-COAR.html _______________________________________________ Instruções para desiscrever-se por conta própria: http://listas.ibict.br/cgi-bin/mailman/options/bib_virtual Bib_virtual mailing list [email protected] http://listas.ibict.br/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bib_virtual
