The EU is to network research papers across Europe to create a free public information resource. The Driver project will use simple internet-based infrastructures to make accessible scientific and technical reports, research articles, experimental and observational data, rich media and other digital objects.
The European Commission’s research infrastructure unit will fund the 18-month project. During this time Driver (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) will prepare for the future expansion and upgrade of the infrastructure across Europe and aim to ensure the widest possible user involvement. Ten international partners are supporting the project.
Driver will help countries to create networks of open access (OA) repositories. It will build on existing institutional repositories and networks from countries including the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium and the UK....
Open access commentator Peter Suber welcomed the launch: “This is big. It should greatly increase the number of OA institutional repositories. Its testbed will demonstrate powerful new services, enticing universities to make their research output available to these services through local incentives to deposit. And it should make it much easier for public funding agencies in European countries to mandate OA archiving for all the research they fund.”
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/17/2006 04:11:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.