COAR is pleased to announce it has become a signatory of the Barcelona Declaration on Research Information.

While there are vast amounts of information being used to manage the research enterprise, this information often sits in proprietary infrastructures resulting in a lack of transparency of the data on which research assessments are based. Analysis of publication outputs, for example, tend to use proprietary databases that do not contain comprehensive information about all publications and mainly include information from large commercial publishers, lacking data from thousands of other journals published in the ecosystem. In addition, they are heavily reliant on the English-language publications, despite the growing number of non-English publications around the world. This ultimately leads to significant biases in the research analytics landscape and introduces unhealthy incentives for researchers to publish in certain venues.

COAR, along with other signatories, believe that the research information landscape requires fundamental change. As a signatory of the Declaration, we commit to taking a lead in reforming the landscape and transforming our practices through:

1. Making openness of research information the default
2. Working with services and systems that support and enable open research information,
3. Supporting the sustainability of infrastructures for open research information, and
4. Working together to realize the transition from closed to open research information

Repositories are critical infrastructure for open science and more and more policies require the deposit of research data, articles, and other research outputs into a repository. In addition, we know that repositories already collectively collect and preserve millions of valuable research outputs contributing to multilingualism and bibliodiversity in the scholarly ecosystem. This will only increase as funders and governments strengthen their open science policies.

A major issue for the repository community is that repository metadata (and thus their collections) are often excluded from the major indexing services that are used in research assessment and, as a result, not counted and recognized by funders and others. To address this issue, COAR will work with the repository community, members and partners, and other national and international initiatives.

To address this issue, COAR will work with the repository community, members and partners, and other national and international initiatives. Activities will include improving and enhancing the existing metadata in repositories and developing national / regional models that aggregate from local repositories and deliver the metadata to international indexing services.