From 12 to 16 May 2025, Nathalie Fargier, Bénédicte Kuntziger and Raphaël Tournoy represented the CCSD at two international open science events in Tokyo: the COAR Annual Conference 2025 and the French-Japanese Workshop on Open Science.
COAR Annual Conference 2025 : Artificial intelligence, IRD and controlled vocabulary
The conference, organised jointly by the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), the Japan Consortium for Open Access Repositories (JPCOAR) and the National Institute of Informatics (NII), brought together over 140 representatives from 23 countries worldwide.
One of the topics discussed that attracted particular attention was the issue of repository crawling by artificial intelligence robots. These practices are becoming increasingly common and can disrupt technical infrastructures and slow down platform response times.
In response, COAR presented the results of an international survey, revealing a shared concern. To address this issue, a working group will be established, with the CCSD participating. The aim is to limit the impact of IA robots while complying with the FAIR principles.
The CCSD is already working on this issue and has deployed a number of technical solutions internally. It is also keen to exchange ideas with other platforms to share experiences and co-construct best practices.
The CCSD is also increasing its involvement in two COAR-led initiatives:
- The International Repository Directory (IRD), which aims to list repositories on an international scale.
- The second is the development of a controlled vocabulary to standardise the types of documents accepted in open archives.
French-Japanese Workshop on Open Science : a closer cooperation between France and Japan
The French-Japanese workshop on open science, co-organised by the CNRS, the NII and the Science and Technology Service of the French Embassy in Japan, provided an opportunity for in-depth dialogue on national policies and practices in this field. Presentations were given on HAL, Recherche.data.gouv and Software Heritage, followed by rich discussions. Japan recently introduced an open access policy requiring researchers to deposit their published articles in an open archive. The country has a robust network of open archives comprising around 700 platforms, many of which are hosted by the NII’s national infrastructure. Scientific communities are also committed to open their research data.
This mission to Japan also provided an opportunity to build on the dialogue established between the CCSD and the NII following the NII delegation’s visit to Lyon in January 2025. The meeting formed part of efforts to strengthen cooperation between the two institutions, and more broadly between France and Japan, in the field of open science.