Collaboration with COAR

I'm back from the Open Repositories 2010 meeting now, and, having cleared most of my immediate tasks, I have time to reflect on some of last weeks presentations and meetings.

On Wednesday last week I attended the COAR 'birds of a feather' session at OR2010, and was introduced to a number of representatives of various member institutions, and was given an overview of COAR, its members and what it is all about. As stated on their website, COAR is a 'not-for-profit association of repository initiatives' which aim s to 'enhance greater visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of Open Access digital repositories'.

In addition to the meeting I had informal discussions with Birgit Schmidt, and was able to talk to her and her colleagues about UKCoRR, its aims, and what it had achieved already.

I was able to attend this meeting as my institution (the University of Nottingham) is currently a COAR member (at a cost of €2500 pa). As far as I can tell, JISC and EDINA are currently the other UK members, but sadly UKCoRR does not have any money, let alone €2500 to put towards COAR membership. The team from Göttingen were interested in UKCoRR and I have agreed to write a short case study or briefing paper, to explain more about what we have achieved in the UK and how this has been accomplished.

We will stay in close touch with COAR and the team, but as UKCoRR has no funding, we cannot make the necessary contribution to become members, so for now, we will stay in touch and collaborate where appropriate, but UKCoRR as an organisation will not be able to become formal members of COAR at this time.