Advancing Open Science: Transforming UFPR'S Digital Repository Infrastructure

The aim of this communication is to provide an overview of the twenty-year history of UFPR's repository, offering a focused perspective on its creation and maintenance in Latin America. The Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) launched its Institutional Digital Repository (RDI) to provide access to academic outputs, such as theses, dissertations, and other scholarly production, in 2004. Over two decades, the repository evolved to include Open Educational Resources (OER), institutional research projects, and Brazil's first public scientific data repository. UFPR has progressed, yet its siloed infrastructure disrupts integration and accessibility across repositories. This fragmentation prevents the effective management, sharing, and discovery of academic and research resources, challenging Open Science ideals. UFPR aims to build a consolidated institutional repository using an integrated digital platform to solve this. Its centralized portal will simplify submission and access by applying FAIR principles. Key technological innovations include developing machine learning tools to automate metadata extraction, enable dataset interconnectivity, and improve resource discovery. The unified platform will promote proactive knowledge management, capacity building through training, community engagement, and open data policy development. UFPR intends to lead Open Science in Brazil and Latin America by fostering international partnerships, citizen science, and collaborative research.