<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 23 Sep 2009, at 22:12, Peters, Dale wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"> <div> <!-- Converted from text/rtf format --><p dir="LTR"><span lang="en-za"><font face="Consolas">An alternative to the systematic commercialisation of Open Access data is the formal constitution of COAR: the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, scheduled to take place in Open Access Week 2009. <a href="http://www.driver-repository.eu/DRIVER-COAR.html"><span lang="en-za"><u><font color="#0000FF" face="Consolas">http://www.driver-repository.eu/DRIVER-COAR.html</font></u></span></a></font></span></p></div></blockquote>Apart from the fact that "systematic commercialisation" is a bit of an exaggeration, can you explain exactly how a repository organisation is going to provide "an alternative" service model? Surely building other services is the alternative? Shouldn't there be a "Confederation of Open Access Services" ????</div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div><p dir="LTR"><span lang="en-za"></span></p> <p dir="LTR"><span lang="en-za"><font face="Consolas">Emerging as the sustainable outcome of the DRIVER infrastructure, COAR is a community-driven approach, where institutions can determine how they want their repositories to be deployed.</font></span></p></div></blockquote>Institutions already determine how they want their repositories to be deployed. It is true that the majority of them don't publish policies for metadata and data reuse (according to data from OpenDOAR), so that state of affairs should be improved upon.<br><blockquote type="cite"><div><p dir="LTR"><span lang="en-za"><font face="Consolas">The action plan is directed towards international organisational support for Open Access in research infrastructures around the globe. </font></span></p></div></blockquote>I applaud this but it is (according to the website) COAR's *second* goal set. Its first goal set is to maintain the DRIVER confederation. Does this mean that COAR is a membership club whose first allegiance is to its own continued existence? Will membership drives will be the first thing on the agenda and where membership marketing and advocacy will take priority over OA marketing and advocacy?<br></div>--<div>Les</div></body></html>