Atlanta, GA – November 1, 2019 – LYRASIS, an innovative full-service technology and services nonprofit that is home to ten community supported open source programs, and LA Referencia, the network of open access repositories from ten Latin American countries, are pleased to announce the creation of a new partnership to advance and promote open source communities in Latin America.

The goal of the partnership is to support adoption and engagement with vital open source, community-supported technologies and programs designed to manage scholarly communication, shared data and digital repositories. 

The partnership has four objectives:

  1. To promote in person and online trainings, workshops and events in Latin America on the latest releases of the LYRASIS community supported programs adopted in the Region;
  2. To support the realization of optimal repositories in compliance with international standards and, in this respect, to influence policies and policy makers nationally and internationally;
  3. To coordinate and support National User Groups activities and to help cross-communities collaborations; and 
  4. To engage the respective communities and identify stakeholders in partnership activities and to communicate the result of the partnership internationally.

The partnership was formalized via a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), effective 10/31/2019. 

Lisa Larson, Senior Director of Outreach and Engagement, says of the partnership, “This is an exciting time here at LYRASIS. The recent merger with DuraSpace has meant that we are now home to ten community supported programs, all of which are vital for the fields of archives, libraries, museums and research. We are committed to supporting these programs and technologies, increasing engagement, investing in development and ensuring sustainability so that organizations holding vital data can continue to collaborate and create important research using tools designed for their specific needs. This partnership marks the first major LYRASIS initiative in Latin America, and we are excited to collaborate with LA Referencia to support community supported programs in the area.”

LA Referencia 

Bianca Amaro, President of LA Referencia, say “There is an opportunity and need to support open access platforms in Latina America. The region has been a pioneer in open access results and in the actual context we must maintain that position and advance also to open science. This MoU allows us to do collaborative training and develop local communities. For example as many known platforms such Dspace are widely used in Latin America and community engagement, information and training are vital to help institutions across countries, and support technology upgrades for better value add services.”

RedCLARA 

Luis Eliecer Cárdenas Marín, Executive Director of RedCLARA, declared “This MoU allows greater collaboration between RedCLARA, LA Referencia and Lyrasis, favoring the efforts that LA Referencia and RedCLARA have been making in the region to provide the necessary infrastructure to promote and support open science policies. Something that is being increasingly supported by the CyT organizations in Latin America. In this sense, the work expectations for next year between RedCLARA and LA Referencia are very positive. We have made progress in consolidating mutual support and hope that this will increase and benefit the entire scientific community in the region”.

About LYRASIS 

LYRASIS is a 501 non-profit membership organization whose mission is to support enduring access to the world’s shared academic, scientific and cultural heritage through leadership in open technologies, content services, digital solutions and collaboration with archives, libraries, museums and knowledge communities worldwide.

About LA Referencia 

LA Referencia is the network of open access repositories from ten Latin American countries. It supports national open access strategies in Latin America through shared standards and a single discovery platform. LA Referencia is an initiative that came out of the technical and organizational agreements between public science and technology organizations (National Ministries and Science & Technology Departments). LA Referencia aims to create a truly comprehensive platform to support research and scholarly communication with the objective of increasing the visibility of science in participating countries.