COAR » Working Group – developing a blueprint for global interoperability of open access repository networks

" ... Over the past several years, a number of regional and national OA repository networks have emerged. These networks have been developed to fulfill different requirements and they have adopted a variety of metadata standards and vocabularies. Current standards/guidelines include OAI-PMH, OpenAIRE guidelines, RIOXX, and others. These standards/guidelines define both the format by which repositories expose their metadata and also how they articulate various elements in their collections such as output type, publication date, access status, funder and grant IDs, embargo periods, re-use conditions, and so on. Greater interoperability across these metadata standards and guidelines will improve discovery and enable the development of more sophisticated cross-repository services such as usage statistics or content analysis by text mining. In addition, a shared  understanding and common approaches to vocabularies and metadata will provide uniform information to governments and funding agencies about the products of funded research, and build confidence with users and stakeholders. The aim of this working group is to develop a blueprint that will outline the steps needed to ensure greater interoperability across repository networks, and ideally with other related systems and actors as well (publishers, CRIS, etc.). The group will commence its work in Oct 2014 via a mix of teleconference and online collaboration tools and aim to have a completed plan by March 2015. The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) will act as convener of the working group ... CASRAI will facilitate the process of developing the blueprint. CASRAI (Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information) is a non-profit standards development organization ..."