The DFG (German Research Foundation) supports a project for the networking of certified repositories in Germany
Today, almost all German Universities and numerous scientific institutions systematically provide free online access to scientific publications and other materials (Open Access). Germany with its over 100 digital repositories takes second place behind the USA. In order to increase the worldwide perception and effect of the German Research contribution, the recently started project "Open-Access-Network" (OA-Network) [OA-Netzwerk] seeks to intensify the national networking of these repositories.
Supported by the DFG, the project OA-Network is a joint collaboration of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the Universities of Göttingen and Osnabrück. It aims to virtually integrate all document and publication services with a DINI certificate and to increase the number of DINI certified repositories. The DINI certificate was developed by the German Initiative for Network Information (DINI) to evaluate the quality of publication services. By referring to international standards and quality criteria, Germany takes a leading role in certifying document and publication services. These certified repositories easily blend in overall networks such as the DRIVER pan-European repository infrastructure (Repositories Infrastructure Vision for European Research).
Networking will not only be pushed forward organisationally, but also technically and infrastructurally. OA-Network therefore supports repository managers in the certification process and, at the same time, issues a number of services on its platform. Documents are accessible by full-text search, search via metadata and overall browsing. The platform offers additional services, i.e. information about new documents (Alerting), export functions for common reference formats and the link-up of printing services (Print on Demand). Furthermore, the project integrates future developments from other electronic publishing projects such as user statistics and citation analysis.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/16/2008 10:45:00 AM.
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.
