2016 Chinese Institutional Repository Conference and launch of the new repository group in China, CHAIR

The 4th annual Chinese Institutional Repository Conference took place in Chongqing, China on September 21-22, 2016, with the theme of “Rich functions and extended roles for institutional repositories”. The conference was jointly organized by National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and CIRG (Chinese institutional repository implementation group), and Chongqing University Library. It attracted over 330 registered participants, reflecting the growing interest in repositories in the Chinese library community.

A wide range of issues and topics related to repositories were discussed over the two days including research data management, integration with CRIS systems, training, policies, guidelines, and so on. The conference began with a presentation by the director of National Science Library, CAS, Huang Xiangyang, who highlighted that IRs represent an important infrastructure for knowledge service, and called on for China’s IRs to collaborate more closely and construct a stronger Chinese IR network. Zhu Zhongming, from Lanzhou Library of CAS introduced architecture and service of China Open Research Cloud (CORC), which will support and help institutions to build up their IRs. Moderated by Zhang Xiaolin, principal scientist of National Science Library at CAS, the conference also had presentations from several overseas speakers, including Kathleen Shearer (COAR), Iryna Kuchma (EIFL), Friedrich Summann (BASE), Jim Entwood (azXiv), Kazu Yamaji (NII) and others.

On the morning September 22, there was a ceremony to celebrate the establishment of the "China Academic Institutional Repository" (CHAIR). Zhu Qiang, University Librarian from Peking University, announced the launch of this federation of 33 universities, which will enable greater information sharing and collaborative work on repositories across the Chinese universities. Chen Ling and Nie Hua, Associate University Librarians at PKU introduced CHAIR and explained that it will begin with a launch of six different working groups. COAR congratulates our Chinese colleagues on the vibrant community they are developing around open access and repositories, and we look forward to continue working with our Chinese members (National Science Library (CAS), Peking University Library, and Xiamen University Libraries) as well as the newly formed CHAIR federation and the broader Chinese repository community.

Special thanks to Ku Liping, National Science Library, CAS, for his organizational support and providing the full report, which I have summarized here for OpenAIRE.

Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director, COAR