Jisc joins the Confederation of Open Access Repositories
Jisc has this week become a founding member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), joining those representing the UK.
Taking inspiration from the European DRIVER repositories project, which helps to enhance repository development, COAR takes this vision to an international scale; founding members of the Confederation include members from North America, China and Japan, as well as Europe.
The aim of COAR is to ‘enhance and progress the provision, visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of Open Access repositories,’ which also fits with Jisc’s work to show the benefit to researchers of using repositories.
Neil Jacobs Jisc’s programme manager for digital repositories says, “Jisc’s work over the past few years in encouraging the growth of institutional repositories means that the UK now has a virtually unparalleled network of repositories that covers almost all of the research-base of UK higher education.
“Joining COAR at the early stage of its development means members will be able to contribute to shaping the organisation’s objectives which will look at interoperability, raising awareness and promoting Open Access repositories, supporting the repository community and working with partners in closely related fields such as research management and publishing.”
Open Access repositories offer researchers and universities the chance to significantly increase the impact of their research outputs, with the potential for significant benefits for UK higher education and the economy and society more widely.
Find out more about COAR and Jisc’s work in Open Access