The Board of Directors of LA Referencia, made up of representatives of the countries that make up the network, elected Robinson Zapata-Pino (SENACYT - Panama) as its president and Patricia Muñoz (ANID-Chile) as vice president for a period of 2 years.

Robinson Zapata-Pino is head of the Department of Scientific and Technological Information of the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation (SENACYT) of Panama. He has been a member of the LA Referencia Council since 2020.

For her part, Patricia Muñoz is the deputy director of Networks, Strategy and Knowledge of the [National Research and Development Agency (ANID) of Chile] (https://anid.cl/), along with being one of the creators and founders of LA Referencia and being part of the Board of Directors to date.

Robinson Zapata-Pino explained that his joint purpose with Patricia Muñoz is to show the need for integration to continue the path towards open science. He added:“We are two subregions, and our focus is on union and integration. That is our first message, the integration of visions.”

Along these lines, Vice President Patricia Muñoz pointed out: “LA Referencia is a public good that has been satisfactorily received by countries in the region and even outside it. We need to strengthen and not lose that effort to continue advancing from access to open science. We need to have a cooperative view, including differences; this is the motivation for being here. We are looking for a more articulated way of understanding what we want as a region in terms of LA Referencia and what open science is, in relation to what we have achieved so far.”

When raising the goals of collaborative work, Robinson Zapata-Pino added that the objective is to continue strengthening the regional open science infrastructure, including the technical aspects that have to do with systems, platforms and, in addition to that, open the door to other knowledge systems and organizations, for example national research and education networks, and other initiatives and organizations that also contribute to the consolidation of open science. In this sense, also the integration of innovation ecosystems that are part of the productive management of the countries and the financing spaces for long-term sustainability are fundamental for LA Referencia to continue growing and adding more nations to enable the exchange of good practices from all countries, whether or not they are members of LA Referencia.

About Robinson Zapata-Pino

Biotechnologist, research specialist. He has been an assistant professor at the Universidad Santo Tomás de Chile and a researcher at the Universidad Diego Portales, the University of Santiago de Chile and the University of Panama. He is currently the head of the Department of Scientific and Technological Information of the SENACYT of Panama, where he coordinates various actions, such as:

  • ⁠ ⁠Scientific Bibliography Access Platform (ABC Platform).
  • ⁠ ⁠Bibliometric investigations.
  • ⁠ ⁠Support for the strengthening of institutional repositories and Panama’s national node of document repositories (PRICILA).
  • ⁠ ⁠Leads the national CRIS of Panama (CONECTO).
  • ⁠ Coordinates the implementation of the National Research Data Repository.
  • ⁠ ⁠Directs the formation of the National Research and Education Network of Panama.
  • ⁠ ⁠Among others.

He is the representative of Panama before:

  • ⁠ ⁠The Federated Network of Latin American Institutional Publications Repositories

Scientific - LA Referencia.

  • ⁠ ⁠Lyrasis
  • ⁠ ⁠ORCID
  • ⁠ ⁠LIVE
  • ⁠ ⁠Datacite
  • ⁠ ⁠Central American technical team for open science.

About Patricia Muñoz

She has been director of the CONICYT Scientific Information Program and, since 2019, she has been deputy director of Networks, Strategy and Knowledge at ANID. In this last position, he leads strategic areas that cover territorial and international articulation, institutional strengthening, access to data and scientific knowledge, as well as enabling infrastructures for astronomy and access to information. Its main lines of specialization are access and open science, production monitoring and scientific policies.

Also, it has designed and implemented scientific information systems such as:

Researchers Portal https://investigadores.anid.cl/

Datascience https://dataciencia.anid.cl/

ANID Repository https://repositorio.anid.cl/home

Currently at ANID he leads the implementation of the Open Access Policy and is a member of several commissions of experts and international networks, Red SciELO, and since 2024 he has joined the Council of the Research Data Alliance – RDA. He is also a founding member of LA Referencia, Ibero-American Infrastructure for Open Science, and part of the board of directors of said entity, which he chaired between 2016 and 2018.