Aquatic Commons (History)

History of Aquatic Commons

• Aquatic Commons was an open access repository providing access to published and unpublished related to the natural marine, estuarine/brackish and freshwater environments. 

• It was developed by IAMSLIC, and initially implemented under contract by the Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA). FCLA hosted, developed and managed the Eprints software from 2007 to November 2010.

• In December 2010, within the framework of the long-standing collaboration between IAMSLIC and the International Oceanographic Commission, the IODE Project Office in Oostende (Belgium) agreed to host Aquatic Commons as part of its efforts to promote free and open access to marine scientific information, which also includes its own OceanDocs repository.

• IODE hosted Aquatic Commons and provided technical support until August 2021 when Aquatic Commons and OceanDocs were merged to create the new joint repository AquaDocs. 

• The decision to merge the repositories was made in 2019 after extensive consultation done by the Aquatic Commons Evaluation team. Planning for a new joint repository was conducted in 2020-2021 with membership from the Aquatic Commons Board, OceanDocs Steering Group, IODE Project Office, and FAO ASFA. The new AquaDocs repository launched on August 17, 2021.

Background documents

• Aquatic Commons Joint Proposal, Fall 2005 (MS-Word doc) and (PDF)

• Aquatic Commons Taskforce Report, Fall 2006 (PDF)

• Aquatic Commons Evaluation, Fall 2019 –Background Information and Business Models Comparison

• Annual reports are available in the members’ area.

Select publications and presentations

• Kalentsits, Maria and Gribling, Armand. (2013) What goes up must come down: publications from developing countries in the Aquatic Commons. In: 14th International Conference on Grey Literature : Tracking Innovation through Grey Literature, 29-30 November 2012,  Rome, Italy, pp. 37-44.

• Ibeun, M.O. (2010)  International visibility and accessibility of articles in the Proceedings of Fisheries Society of Nigeria through the Aquatic Commons repository. In: 25th Annual Conference of the Fisheries Society of Nigeria (FISON) , 25-29 Oct 2010, Lagos, Nigeria, pp. 668-676.

• Garnica, Jose. (2008)  Aquatic Commons. Presented at the First Meeting of the Mediterranean Marine and Aquatic Libraries and Information Centres Network, 17-18 November, 2008, Cadiz, Spain.

• Haas, Stephanie C. and Raymond, Lisa Marie and Heckman, Jan. (2008) Creating the flow: expanding the role of the Aquatic Commons. In: SAIL 2008: Connecting the Oceans, April 14-16, 2008, Panama City, Panama.

• Collins, Jean. (2007) Information sharing via Aquatic Commons. FAN: FAO Aquaculture Newsletter, no. 3

• Collins, Jean and Reynolds, Eric. (2007) FAO FishCode Aquatic Commons: improving information for responsible fisheries and aquaculture. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Rome, Italy.

• Webster, Janet and Jean Collins. (2007) The Aquatic Commons: a new digital repository for international aquatic information. IFLA Express No. 7, Durban South Africa. Available in English,French andSpanish