By signing the Barcelona Declaration, PKP and Érudit reinforce their commitment to open and transparent information on scientific research.
The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information (Barcelona DORI) aims to support fundamental change in the research landscape by encouraging the adoption of open science principles. In particular, the Barcelona DORI aims at the management of research information to ensure its availability, quality, and its control by academic communities. The Barcelona DORI was motivated by the observation that much of the research information essential to the advancement of knowledge, decision-making and public policy is inaccessible, locked up in proprietary infrastructures.
The two partner organizations in Coalition Publica, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and Érudit, have both signed the Declaration, affirming their commitment to opening research.
“Just like in other fields of scholarly communication, scientific communities need to regain greater control and transparency over the mechanisms with which they are being evaluated and the information used to that end. The Barcelona Declaration is a positive step in this direction,” says Vincent Larivière, Professor at the Université de Montréal and Scientific Director of Consortium Érudit.
In June of 2024, Érudit announced its support, noting that signing on “thus reinforces the open and transparent nature of its digital infrastructures and its will to collaborate with Canadian and international actors within the research ecosystem, in service of a more accessible science.” PKP’s announcement shares this reinforcement, emphasizing that “the same principles of openness, inclusion, innovation, collaboration, and the worldwide right to knowledge are at the core of our (open infrastructure) work today.”
“The vision proposed by the Barcelona Declaration both relies on and builds upon the open infrastructure of PKP software. For over 25 years, PKP’s software has helped scholars organize and curate their own metadata and has made that metadata available precisely so that open information systems could make this scholarship visible and valued,” says Juan Pablo Alperin, Co-Director of the ScholCommLab at Simon Fraser University and Scientific Director of PKP.
As the first two Canadian supporters of this Declaration, we hope that this action will inspire others to do the same. Our organizations are proud to work with partners in Canada and internationally, and will continue to contribute to efforts to make research information free to use and free from restrictions on reuse, to make a difference in how researchers and organizations serve science and “the way science serves the whole of humanity.”
We encourage you to join us and the more than 100 other organizations around the world who have already signed or supported the Declaration.
To learn more and add your signature, visit the Declaration website.
