PART 1 – The Empirical Picture
4.7 Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research (DRIVER)
Case Overview
What does the project do mainly? DRIVER develops standards and infrastructure for sharing content (especially metadata) and functionality among digital repositories. DRIVER aims to integrate the metadata and data (that means publications and publication related
information) that exist in repositories across Europe. In trying to harmonize this highly varied data across Europe, it is hoped that the community of repository managers will be brought together.
Motivations for setting it up: The main motivation behind the project is to bring together scattered scientific information in one (virtual) place and make it accessible to a wider audience. There are various scientific repositories storing research material such as texts, data and other material in Europe in universities, research institutions, and national organisations. At the time DRIVER started, there were scattered similar initiatives on the national level in several countries (e.g. Netherlands, Germany, UK) and DRIVER set out to bring all this information together, with repository managers and librarians targeting end users.
Main goals of the project: DRIVER is set out to develop and provide the e-Infrastructure and the interface capable to support the integration of various digital repository sources from diverse collections. A core building block to reach this aim is the software D-Net which can be used in all kinds of repositories and in digital libraries. In addition to this main goal, several other goals exist, such as fostering a European community of repositories, expanding the geographical reach of digital repositories, establishing a European Confederation of digital repositories, promoting the idea (and availability) of enhanced publications and advocating Open Access.
Project maturity: Having started in 2006, DRIVER is a relatively young e-Infrastructure.
Nevertheless, good progress seems to have been made, with the DRIVER platform D-Net having already being adopted by four National Repositories.
Project funding: The funding is 2.7 M Euro for DRIVER2 and was 1.8 M Euro for DRIVER1. With cost of operation being at about 1 million EUR per year, 40% are indirect and 60% direct costs.
Organizational Structure
Size and composition: DRIVER involves participants from 13 institutions from eleven European countries. These institutions include universities and National repositories.
Governance: Project tasks are divided among several organizations: NKUA (University of Athens) is responsible for scientific, technological and management support. NKUA is the project coordinator, maintains the services provided by DRIVER-II, and provides support for enhanced publications and support and training to users. ISTI-CNR is the scientific and technological coordinator of the project. Technical aspects of the project are handled by inter-organizational collaboration among partners
Managing internal and external relations
Management of the project: The DRIVER Confederation of European Digital Repositories constitutes a network of content providers and involves academic institutions that host scientific digital repositories, universities as well as research centres, and other national, regional or subject-based federations.
Page 46 Users: There are three types of users:
• Repository managers who provide DRIVER with their content or take up DRIVER infrastructure.
• National organisations (or other types of organisations) who are willing to take up the DRIVER infrastructure and build their own national digital repository systems
• End users using the portals
244 repository managers have submitted their data. Three European countries (Belgium, Portugal and Spain), together with China and India, are using or considering deploying the D-NET framework for their national repository.
User recruitment: DRIVER seeks to raise awareness among potential repository management level users in international workshops and conferences. Tutorials and demos are also
presented in various European conferences (e.g. OAI6) and at a national level (Belgium and UK local conferences for repository managers). The work (papers) produced by the DRIVER partners is presented in European conferences related to the digital/information library fields.
Challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration: Co-operation between the different roles works smoothly according to the interviewed DRIVER representative. Challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration are not really encountered here.
Collaboration with other organizations: The DRIVER Confederation of European Digital
Repositories involves academic institutions that host scientific digital repositories, universities as well as research centres, and other national, regional or subject-based federations. It is set up as a European federation of federations – a Confederation. It constitutes a network of content providers. It is intended to extend the DRIVER Confederation to assist those countries without developed national structures of repositories.
Confederation partners represent European and international repository communities, subject based communities, repository system providers, service providers, as well as political, research, and funding organisations Its members are organizations representing the key stake holders in the international repository landscape. Some of the DRIVER partners are, or will be, part of the confederation. Institutions and initiatives come from the majority of European countries, the U.S., Canada, Latin America, China, Japan, India and Africa. DRIVER has signed a Memorandum of Understanding or Letter of Intent with the following partner organisations:
SPARC Europe, LIBER, eIFL.net, RECOLECTA Spain, DINI OA-Netzwerk Germany and DRF Japan.
The Confederation aims to advance DRIVER from test-bed status to a fully functional e-Infrastructure, including a sustainable organizational model, a geographical and thematic extension of the repository platform, the uptake of DRIVER technology and the close
correspondence between the DRIVER infrastructure and communities of practice. It thus aims to provide an integrated concept for organisation, technology and content for the European Open Access repository landscape, in a virtual structure that is independent from the DRIVER project activities.
Technology
Main technologies, resources and services: The DRIVER system is implemented on an open service-oriented software architecture (SOA) logically organized into areas shown in the figure below. This architecture guarantees service extensibility and interoperability, system
expandability and local repository autonomy. The DRIVER deployment may include multiple instances of the services identified, in order to guarantee better quality of service (e.g., availability, performance) or to support diverse functionality (e.g., different query
languages). These instances, which may have either the same or a different configuration, are distributed on different sites /physical locations managed by the coordinating bodies. Choice
Page 47 of sites and allocation and distribution of the service instances are driven by both
organizational and technical quality parameters, e.g., independence, security, availability, performance, etc.
Role of technology development: DRIVER has developed D-Net. This open source software offers a tool-box for deploying a customizable distributed system featuring tools for
harvesting and aggregating heterogeneous data sources. A variety of end-user functionalities are applied over this integration, ranging from search, recommendation, collections, profiling to innovative tools for repository manager users. A running instance of the software, namely the “European Information Space”, maintained by the DRIVER Consortium to aggregate Open Access publications from European Institutional Repositories, can be accessed online at:
www.driver-community.eu (Search the Repositories Portal).
Data sharing: N/A
Interoperability with similar or connecting infrastructures: N/A
Contribution
Main contributions of project: DRIVER has built the “European Information Space”, the DRIVER search portal based on a robust network of content providers. The DRIVER software is running and can be used to set up similar portals by all kinds of institutions, also to develop new applications on top of the basic services. A support network for repository managers is up and running as well as services for the end-user. DRIVER is further advocating Open Access and promoting the idea of Enhanced Publications.
The webtool is now used in several European countries and many universities have registered.
DRIVER’s Open Access policy is especially valuable for smaller universities, giving them the opportunity to increase their visibility. About 245 institutions all over Europe participate in the DRIVER Information Space. There is strong community uptake and commitment.
Sustainability is likely given the establishment of the confederation. Libraries generally have an interest in taking the DRIVER service and running it and repositories are willing to conform to the framework.
Challenges: The DRIVER representative interviewed states that the main objectives have been reached and the task is now to keep it working. The two main challenges for the future are studying and organizing the European repository landscape, trying to bring together a range of technologies and passing on standards to the various repository stakeholder groups, and secondly, making a production quality system with 24/7 operation, which requires planning and resources that go much beyond the scope of a project. The Enhanced Publication also
Page 48 needs further attention and promotion. It is in the prototype phase and further research on
“non-plain” publications and access to them is desperately needed.
Informants’ recommendations to policy makers
Open access needs further advocacy. Although linking things has been a strong driving force in development in recent years, data and publications are still separated more often than not.
Mandates are essential, if research funding hinges on making results available open access, this will push the idea forward.
SWOT analysis
Table 4-13: DRIVER strengths and weaknesses
Strengths Weakness
Long-term
funding Long-term funding of the DRIVER
depends on funding subsequent projects
Sustainability Accordingly, there is a defined project
ending by the end of 2009.
User recruitment 245 repository managers have submitted their data. Three countries (Belgium, Portugal and Spain) are using or considering to deploy the D-NET framework for their national repository.
Involvement of
current users Involvement of current users seems to be positive
Organizational
bedding N/A N/A
Institutionalised
links Links to large parts of the repository landscape exist
External use of
software, tools Core business of DRIVER is external use of their software platform which has been quite successful
Table 4-14: DRIVER opportunities and threats
Opportunities Threats
Funding of member organizations
Participating organizations are
universities and national repositories that are not dependent on volatile funding.
Technology monitoring Competition with other
infrastructures or technologies
Google book search
Security risks None disclosed None disclosed
Change of user communities and fields
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