Memorandum strengthens cooperation in sharing scientific knowledge
THE Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the network La Reference – The Federated Network of Institutional Repositories of Scientific Publications of South and Central America signed on September 16, in Porto during the Open Science Fair event, the Memorandum of Collaboration with a view to strengthening cooperation in the sharing of scientific knowledge between Portugal and Latin American countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.
Since 2009, Portugal, through the FCT, and Brazil, through the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology – IBICT, have been collaborating in the area of open access and, more recently, in Open Science. With this new Memorandum, cooperation also extends to other Latin American countries, RCAAP portal – Open Access Scientific Repositories of Portugal to aggregate content from the institutional repositories of the La Referencia network and vice versa. The development of specialized software is another objective of this Memorandum, enabling increased innovation and reduced development effort, thus achieving more sustainable software.
The national open access initiative – the Open Access Scientific Repositories in Portugal (RCAAP) was founded in 2008 with the mission of promoting, supporting, and facilitating the adoption of open access to scientific knowledge in Portugal and storing, making available, and preserving the scientific production transmitted to them. One of the initiative's services is the RCAAP portal, which aims to collect, aggregate, and index open access (or free access) scientific content from the institutional repositories of national higher education institutions and other R&D organizations. The RCAAP portal serves as a single point for research, discovery, location, and access to thousands of scientific and academic documents, including journal articles, conference papers, theses, and dissertations, distributed across numerous Portuguese repositories.
Written by: FCT Communications Office
Photo: Dr. Nuno Feixa Rodrigues, from FCT, and Bianca Amaro, President of LA Referencia, during the signing of the agreement.
Credit: LA Referencia
