Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Creating a researcher's profile to accompany archived work

The Dutch DARE program has launched a Profile Management System called PROMAS. From today's announcement:
PROMAS [is] a browser-based tool which integrates existing information from various academic data sources (CRIS, repositories, teaching info, plus others). PROMAS enables academics and institutes alike to create academic profiles in various formats, depending on the situation....Advantages are that the information is always up-to-date and only already existing information is being used. The HARVEX-project has realized not only a prototype, but a fully working production system. Core features of PROMAS are: [1] The system is explicitly directed toward archiving the results of academic labour and in so doing giving the opportunity to fully make use of the possibilities and objectives of the universities DARE repositories; [2] It gives the academics and institutions the possibility to strengthen the communicative aspects of their work toward the relevant stakeholders, by putting specific accents or structures in his profile which he / she thinks his stakeholders will find important; [3] It is in connection with the modern way in which communication and interaction take place in the academic community. Information is being communicated through (text) files in different formats (RTF, HTML, PDF) directed towards human reading and understanding. Information is also used more and more by stakeholders through harvesting meta-data by way of XML / RSS-feed standards (machine reading and understanding).

PS: As noted, PROMAS uses DARE's HARVEX (Harvestable Excellence) technology. While the Dutch page on HARVEX is online, the link to the English page is not currently working.