DRIVER: building a sustainable infrastructure for global repositories
| Date | 12 April 2011 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471111125203 |
| Published date | 12 April 2011 |
| Pages | 249-260 |
| Author | Dale Peters,Norbert Lossau |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
DRIVER: building a sustainable
infrastructure for
global repositories
Dale Peters
ICT Division University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, and
Norbert Lossau
Go
¨ttingen State and University Library, Go
¨ttingen, Germany
Abstract
Purpose – DRIVER embodies a bold vision – that of worldwide networks of scientific data
repositories. This paper seeks to examine the aims of the European Union funded project, to explore
the development of a distributed infrastructure that enables enhanced interoperability of data,
resulting in a global knowledge infrastructure supporting the scholarly communication of the future.
Design/methodology/approach – The primary objective of DRIVER was to establish a flexible,
robust, and scalable infrastructure for all European and world-wide digital repositories, managing
scientific information in an open access model increasingly demanded by researchers, funding
organisations and other stakeholders. Adopting a result-driven approach, activities focused on the
expansion of the content base with high quality research outputs, including textual research papers,
data sets and other scholarly publications.
Findings – The release of the D-NET v1.0 open source software proved a successful basis for a
distributed service-oriented architecture, enabling enhanced interoperability of data and
service-providers, and offering wide-ranging functionality including search; recommendation;
collection building, and personal profiling as innovative tools for repository managers. In addition,
it was found that in building a robust network of voluntary content providers, known as the DRIVER
Confederation, the infrastructure came to support a durable organisational structure, now formally
constituted as the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR). The international repository
organisation enables further collaboration between research communities in a co-ordinated network
comprising a growing number of institutional repositories, national federations and research
institutions and data aggregators.
Practical implications – The development of COAR is the extension of the EU-based infrastructure
to global research communities in China, India, Africa and Latin America, deploying a vigorous
awareness and advocacy programme. Evolving from the DRIVER Confederation, COAR aims to
provide an ongoing support service for repository managers, in a dynamic set of guidelines aimed at
data interoperability, and to provide the strategic support required to implement new forms of
scholarly communication. Th ese issues are addressed in term s of technical infrastructur e
developments but will focus on strategic issues of policy development, improved services and
additional functionality offered to the scholarly community.
Originality/value – This paper outlines DRIVER’s unique response to the changing global
information environment. Concepts of strategic international collaboration are pursued in COAR,
based on the scientific and technical collaboration achieved in DRIVER. The paper addresses
significant repository development goals that currently challenge repository managers, librarians,
scholars and funders and that indicate the future of Open Access publication – in the ultimate goal of a
global and interactive representation of human knowledge.
Keywords Open access, Digitalstorage, Information management,Software tools
Paper type Case study
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
DRIVER:
a sustainable
infrastructure
249
Received 8 December 2010
Accepted 10 December 2010
The Electronic Library
Vol. 29 No. 2, 2011
pp. 249-260
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640471111125203
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