The COAR Annual Meeting and General Assembly took place 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.
Additionally, Paul Walk and Martin Klein gave an update on the progress of the Notify Project; there was an in depth discussion about repository assessment and best practices frameworks and their current relevance and value for the COAR community; and two new COAR resources were presented: COAR Resource Type Vocabulary, Version 3 and COAR/FECYT Aggregator Profiles dashboard.
The General Assembly, which was held on 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.
Along with Eloy, Wolfram Horstmann, Oya Rieger, and Daisy Selematsela also completed their terms on the board and were thanked for their significant contributions over the last six years.
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