News

In a session attended by representatives of several countries of the Regional Online Information System for Scientific Journals of Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal (Latindex) and National Reference Nodes of LA Refrencia, the organisations signed and launched the Framework Collaboration Agreement that aims to consolidate a Regional Open Science Ecosystem.

(Source: LA Referencia) The agreement aims to constitute a collaborative framework between Latindex, LA Referencia, and RedCLARA for the establishment of the implementation principles of openness, consensus, inclusion and harmonization, community approach, and not-for-profit, for the consolidation of a Regional Open Science Ecosystem.

Lautaro Matas, executive and technical secretary of LA Referencia, emphasized the commitments that this Cooperation Agreement entails: "By signing this agreement we are committing ourselves to work together especially to improve the interoperability of repository platforms, journals and other systems of our Ibero-American scientific and technological environment. We want to promote that the scientific production published in open access journals is available both in the institutional repositories that are part of the LA Referencia network and in the evaluation systems and research management platforms throughout our region".

Ana María Cetto, founding president of Latindex and president of the UNESCO Open Science Committee, enthusiastically celebrated the signing of this agreement and its meaning for the region: “We finally formalized our collaboration after years of sharing principles, values, efforts, visions, and experiences. This is just not a formality. This agreement lays the foundations to work together for the advancement of open science in Ibero-America, through the development and exchange of good data, software, infrastructure, and service practices for the benefit of our journals.”

Andrea Mora, president of LA Referencia, said the agreement demonstrates the openness of the systems to work together for Open Science: "For LA Referencia this agreement represents a very important step forward, as well as for the region because it allows us to build and strengthen the Open Science Ecosystem in Latin America. It will also allow us to optimize the resources we have and continue doing what we know how to do very well: working collectively to democratize knowledge and make the science we do in the region more visible".

Luis Eliécer Cadenas, director of RedCLARA, emphazised: "We have to continue working for the open science ecosystem, to build and consolidate the development of knowledge and more capacities in our region. Always count on us with the possibilities we can have to carry out these efforts".

José Octavio Alonso, general coordinator of Latindex, reflected on the opportunities that this agreement opens up: "The collaboration that we signed today with LA Referencia is part of a good track record that Latindex has, in the sense of collaborating with other initiatives in the region, to share knowledge and information. With LA Referencia we are interested in developing services that support national and institutional open science policies and strategies in the region with a cooperative and non-profit approach. Latindex is very interested in LA Referencia's progress in the development of harvesters and interoperability. Interoperability between Latin American indexing platforms is practically non-existent and its promotion would undoubtedly allow us to take advantage of all the cataloging efforts made by all the systems in the region.”

Finally, Guillermo Chávez, the technical coordinator of Latindex, seconded the importance of the agreement: “I applaud this kind of initiative, and nothing better to do than in a join effort with LA Referencia. UNAM will continue to support these initiatives that seek good practices and the development of shared and interoperable infrastructure and software.”

At the conclusion of the signing of the Agreement, representatives of the different Latindex and LA Referencia countries, took the opportunity to express their congratulations and satisfaction with the agreement, with enthusiasm that it will contribute to the construction of open science in the Ibero-American region.