News

The Board of Directors of LA Referencia, composed of representatives from the countries that make up the network, has elected Robinson Zapata-Pino (SENACYT - Panama) as President and Patricia Muñoz (ANID - Chile) as Vice President for a two-year term.

(Source: LA Referencia) Robinson Zapata-Pino is the Head of the Scientific and Technological Information Department of the National Secretariat for Science, Technology, and Innovation (SENACYT) of Panama. He has been a member of the board of LA Referencia since 2020.

Patricia Muñoz is the Deputy Director of Networks, Strategy, and Knowledge at the National Research and Development Agency (ANID) of Chile. She is also one of the creators and founders of LA Referencia and has been a member of the Board of Directors until now.

The new president explained that his common goal with Patricia Muñoz is to highlight the need to integrate the Ibero-American countries to continue the path toward open science. He added: "We are two sub-regions, and our focus is on unity and integration. This is our first message, the integration of visions."

In this regard, Patricia Muñoz said, "LA Referencia is a public good that has been well received by countries in the region and even beyond. We need to strengthen this effort and not lose it, to move from access to open science. We need to have a cooperative perspective, including differences; this is what motivates us to be here. Based on what we have achieved so far, we are looking for a more coordinated way to understand what we want as a region in terms of LA Referencia and what open science is."

Robinson Zapata-Pino has emphasized the objective of continuing to strengthen the regional open science infrastructure when setting the objectives of collaboration. This includes the technical aspects related to systems, platforms, and the opportunity to integrate other knowledge systems and organizations, such as national research and education networks, and other initiatives and organizations that contribute to the consolidation of open science.  The integration of innovation ecosystems that are part of the productive management of countries and funding spaces for long-term sustainability are also fundamental for LA Referencia to continue to grow and include more countries to enable the exchange of best practices among all countries, whether they are members of LA Referencia or not.

About Robinson Zapata-Pino

Biotechnologist, research specialist. He has been an assistant professor at Santo Tomás University in Chile and a researcher at Diego Portales University, the University of Santiago in Chile, and the University of Panama. He is currently the head of the Department of Scientific and Technological Information at SENACYT in Panama.

About Patricia Muñoz

Patricia Muñoz has been the director of the Scientific Information Program at CONICYT and, since 2019, has served as the Deputy Director of Networks, Strategy, and Knowledge at ANID. In this role, she leads strategic areas that include territorial and international coordination, institutional strengthening, access to data and scientific knowledge, and enabling infrastructures for astronomy and information access. Her main areas of expertise are open access and science, monitoring scientific production, and science policies.

Currently, at ANID, she leads the implementation of the Open Access Policy and participates in several expert committees and international networks, including Red SciELO. Starting in 2024, she will join the Council of the Research Data Alliance (RDA). She is also a founding member of LA Referencia, the Ibero-American infrastructure for open science, and part of its board of directors, which she chaired from 2016 to 2018.

About LA Referencia

The Latin American Network for Open Science, or simply LA Referencia, supports national Open Access strategies in Latin America and Spain through its services, providing a platform with interoperability standards, sharing, and visibility of the scientific production generated by higher education and scientific research institutions.

Through national nodes, LA Referencia integrates scientific articles, doctoral theses and master's theses from over a hundred universities and research institutions in the ten countries that currently make up the network: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Uruguay. This initiative is based on technical and organizational agreements between public science and technology agencies of the member countries, in collaboration with RedCLARA.

LA Referencia was born from the Cooperation Agreement signed in Buenos Aires in 2012, reflecting the political will to offer Latin America's scientific production in open access as a regional public good, with an emphasis on results funded by public resources.