At the ScholCommLab, we believe that information about research outputs—such as publications, funding, and data—should be open, transparent, and community-governed. That’s why we are proud to sign the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information. We already did so in the fall of 2024, but we’re happy to explain the background in this blog post.

The Declaration outlines four key commitments:

• Making openness the default for the research information we use and produce.
  
• Working with services and systems that support and enable open research information.
  
• Supporting the sustainability of open infrastructure.
  
• Supporting collective action to accelerate the transition to openness of research information.

These principles align closely with our research agenda and our values rooted in open science. Through our collaborations and exchanges with organizations like OpenAlex and Crossref, lab members actively support efforts to build open, transparent scholarly metadata ecosystems and have been doing so for quite a while.

For example, Juan has been supporting PKP to offer the OJS open source publishing suite. Juan is also  member of COMET (Collaborative Open Metadata for Education and Research), a task force working to advance collective, community-owned metadata solutions.

Signing the Barcelona Declaration means that ScholCommLab members will:

• Prioritize, if possible, the use of open research information sources in projects;
  
• Developing tools and studies that promote responsible, open research and evaluation practices;
  
• Advocating for sustainable, non-commercial infrastructures to support the scholarly community.

Signing the Barcelona Declaration is a natural extension of our ongoing commitment to making scholarly communication more equitable, transparent, and inclusive—not just in research outputs, but in the infrastructures that underpin them.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/scholcommlab.5406