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With the participation of representatives from Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, Colombia, Argentina and Costa Rica, the Directive Council of LA Referencia met from September 27 to 29 in Buenos Aires aiming to generating a strategy to consolidate the network as a public good, highlighting the capacity for articulation and generation of agreements among member countries.

On the occasion the participants agreed that LA Referencia is on an ambitious path to be inserted as a provider of public goods in open science. This is due to the fact that some steps have been taken in this direction, beginning with the construction of the regional network of repositories of open access to science, the open access approach to scientific-technological publications, the short-term challenges relared to primary research data, among other aspects.

This has been done within the framework of the Agreements that have been reached, through the representatives of the highest authorities of science and technology of the region (Ministries and ONCyT's) who make up LA Referencia.

The meeting in Buenos Aires also focused on decisions and agreements on the next steps of the regional network, according to the main work areas defined for the meeting: Policy / Institutionality, Technology, Guidelines and Communications.

Among the main decisions of the Board was the decision to promote actions in Open Science. In fact, the meeting of San Luis (Mexico 2016) marked the beginning of LA Referencia’s transition from open access to open science. For the network, that is the concept that will mark its action in order to produce Public Goods by the organisms of Science and Technology. In this context, the priority of LA Referencia, apart from publications, will be the scientific data, although it is recognized that Open Science encompasses more aspects. Likewise, this requires to explicit the essential components that will be addressed as public goods for Open Science and that will be used and adapted to the interior of each country.

Another relevant aspect of this meeting of the Council was the organization of working groups in order to deepen the agreements and streamline initiatives, namely: Technical / Technological, Open Science, Institutionality / Sustainability and Strategic Communication. Some of its tasks are to determine the scope of its work as well as the priorities in the short and medium term.

The following representatives were in the Meeting: Margarita Ontiveros (CONACYT, Mexico), Patricia Muñoz (CONICYT, Chile), Carmen Gloria Labbé (RedCLARA, Uruguay), Andrea Mora (CONARE, Costa Rica), Rosa María Guerrero (Vice Minister of Science and Technology, El Salvador ), Isabel Recavarren (Concytec, Peru) Bianca Amaro (IBICT, Brazil), Paola Azrilevich (MINCYT, Argentina), Oscar Gualdrón (COLCIENCIAS, Colombia), Silvia Nakano (MINCYT, Argentina), Alberto Apollaro. (MINCYT, Argentina), Alberto Cabezas B. (Executive Secretary of LA Referencia).

As invitees also participated Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director of COAR, and Eloy Rodrigues, of the University of Minho and President of COAR.

The Minutes of the Meeting, detailing the decisions of the Directing Council, as well as the inaugural speech by Patricia Muñoz Palma, President of LA Referencia, are available for download at http://bit.ly/2hTXutY