After two very successful days of meetings with many esteemed local and international representatives, COAR and INFLIBNET are pleased to announce an agreement to work together to coalesce and strengthen the substantial network of open science repositories in India. The meetings, which took place on April 17-18, 2024 at UNESCO offices in New Delhi, were attended by government and university policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders as well as open science experts from UNESCO and elsewhere. The discussion focused on how we can collectively advance open science in India in a sustainable and inclusive manner and offered an opportunity to hear from major players in India about their activities and the challenges related to open science. A summary of the meeting is available on the COAR website.
Open repositories represent critical infrastructure for supporting leading-edge research in the 21st century. They provide access to underlying datasets, allowing us to validate research claims and they support next generation digital research practices. However, the real power of repositories lies in their ability to act as a network that offers seamless access to their collective resources. India has many repositories hosted at university and government institutions whose purpose is to increase the visibility and application of Indian research. The collaboration between COAR and INFLIBNET will lead to greater cohesion across these repositories.
The meeting came just months after G20 Chief Science Advisers’ Roundtable Meeting resolved to recognize the importance of evolving approaches to providing immediate and free access to appropriate publicly funded research publications and establish interoperability standards that would allow interlinking among various national as well as international repositories. “It is the ideal time to embark on such an initiative, as India is leading a project to establish interoperability across repositories in the G20 countries”, says Professor Devika Medalli, Director of INFLIBNET, “we are so pleased to be working with COAR on enhancing repositories in India”.
COAR is an international association that develops good practices and acts as the leading global voice for the repository community. INFLIBNET is the Information and Library Network of India that is part of the Ministry of Education, Government of India. “This provides an excellent opportunity to work with INFLIBNET to bring Indian repositories together into a stronger network, says Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director of COAR, “and equally to ensure that repositories in India are part of the global open science ecosystem through the adoption of common international standards”.
The work will begin with the launch of a community of practice for repositories in India, but may expand into other activities as the needs and requirements of Indian repositories evolve.
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