Countries from Latin America and the Caribbean will sign a cooperation agreement to implement the Latin American Federated Network of Scientific Documentation Repositories, in order to support the development of regional strategies in the field of Open Access, and to implement a pilot project to define common policies, standards, metadata, resources and some related services.

The agreement meeting, that will take place in Buenos Aires on Thursday, November 29, 2012, will involve the national authorities on scientific management, and will be signed initially by the nine member countries of LAReferencia project, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), an initiative responsible to enhance national conditions to develop the pilot experience on Institutional Repositories in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and El Salvador.

The meeting will be chaired by the Minister of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation of Argentina, Lino Barañao, and will include the participation of national authorities in the scientific management of the member countries of LAReferencia Project as well as international experts in Open Access and Repositories, who will offer a global and a Latin-American vision of the progress in initiatives related to the main topic of the meeting.

This agreement will support and facilitate the equitable access to information to visualize the scientific production of Latin America as a regional public good, promoting its traffic through Internet, a process in which participate the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and the regional advanced network RedCLARA.