COARs

COARs, or the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, refers to an international network and community centered on advancing open access to scholarly communications through improved interoperability and governance of repository infrastructure. While COAR denotes the organization itself, the term COARs is sometimes used to describe its member repositories, libraries, funders, and national bodies that participate in its initiatives.

Mission and scope

COAR aims to enhance the discoverability, access, and reuse of research outputs by promoting common standards, best practices, and shared infrastructure for open repositories. It focuses on interoperability across repositories, effective metadata practices, persistent identifiers, and preservation strategies to ensure long-term access to scholarly content.

Activities and programs

The organization conducts working groups, collaborative projects, and community events to develop and disseminate guidelines and workflows. It engages with other standards bodies and initiatives to align practices around metadata, identifiers, and repository interoperability. Through these activities, COAR supports ecosystems that enable efficient deposit, indexing, and reuse of open access materials.

Governance and impact

COAR operates with a governance structure that includes a board and member representation from repositories, libraries, research institutions, and funders. By coordinating efforts across sectors and regions, COAR seeks to reduce fragmentation in the repository landscape and to strengthen the global infrastructure for open science, open scholarship, and equitable access to research outputs.

See also

Open access, repositories, metadata standards, digital preservation, open science.