"The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has become a founding member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR). COAR is an international not-for-profit association that aims to promote greater visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of Open Access (OA) digital repositories.

Inspired from the European DRIVER repositories project, which helps to enhance repository development, COAR takes this vision to an international scale. Founding members of the Confederation include members from North America, China, Japan and Europe. Joining COAR at the early stage of its development means members will be able to contribute to shaping the organisation’s objectives which will look at interoperability, raising awareness and promoting OA repositories, supporting the repository community and working with partners in closely related fields such as research management and publishing.

Open Access repositories seek to offer researchers and universities the chance to significantly increase the impact of their research outputs, with the potential for significant benefits for UK higher education and the economy and society more widely. The aim of COAR is to enhance and progress the provision, visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of Open Access repositories."