The Open Matariki project aims to support the vision, purpose and mission of the Matariki Network of Universities (MNU). Access to research and scholarly outputs in a healthy scholarly communication ecosystem is essential for discovery, innovation and education. By building upon our collective strengths to ensure timely and continuing access to these outputs around the globe, the project is fundamental to each element of MNU’s mission, and in particular to:
- Promote and develop global excellence in delivering a research-inspired and truly international education to our students;
- Nurture high impact, innovative research communities that stimulate and promote social and global responsibility.
The project arose through discussions of library representatives of each of the MNU institutions. All of us are grappling with issues and opportunities in advancing scholarly communications and open access, and one of the challenges we face is in trying to influence what is essentially a global ecosystem. This challenge is well recognized by institutions and organizations around the world, and there are multiple efforts to work together to achieve more equitable and open models of sharing research outcomes. The MNU libraries posited that we could have unique opportunities to advance these efforts, as a small nimble group of known colleagues, at institutions with similar attributes, working in different national contexts.
In its first phase the project set out to establish the commonality and differences, and explore potential opportunities, in the ways in which each of the MNU libraries and their universities, and their countries, are working to advance new models of scholarly communication and open access.