[UPS] DINI appeal

[Thomas Krichel]

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  At the meeting of the German Initative for Networked Information
  (DINI) in Dortmund on 2000-09-11 and 2000-09-12, I have been
  contributing to an appeal by DINI regarding the OAi.  The full text of
  this appeal is now available at
 
  http://www.dini21.de/veroeffentlichungen/OAI-Appell-0912.htm
 
  I attach my translation of the appeal in plain text format. While
  I have made efforts to get the translation right, only the German
  original should be taken as an official statement from DINI.
 
  To contact the authors of the appeal, write to Peter Schirmbacher
  <schirmbacher@rz.hu-berlin.de>.
  

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel                       http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                   RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel

  2000-10-01 to 2000-12-31:
  Institute for Economic Research / Hitotsubashi University    
  2-1 Naka, Kunitachi City, Tokyo 186-8603, Japan
  +81 42 580 8333 


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                                           Dortmund, 12 September 2000


DINI appeal

Open Archive Initiative at German Universities

To: providers of local electronic archives at German Universities and to
    their funding agencies 

Re: Implementation of Open Archive specifications


I.

The transition from traditional paper-based publication and communication
to a modern digitally-based efficient information system is one of the most
urgent tasks in recent times, as the coverage and efficiency of electronic
networks is strongly increasing.  The German Initiative for Networked
Information (DINI) aims to spur this change among the German academic
education and research institutions.

In this year DINI will place particular emphasis on the support and
development of common co-operative solutions for scientific information in
the universities. We need get all participants involved, be they authors,
editors, service providers i.e. libraries, computer centres and media
centres, as well as the users. Our main concern is to set up open-access,
searchable, steadily-maintained and authenticated university archives.


II.

In the autumn of last year, the most important international scientific
digital libraries founded the Open Archive initiative (OAi).  It aims to
ensure free access to distributed archives of scientific information and to
build common standards for the construction and interoperability of local
archives. This minimum standard starts with the use of persistent
identifiers for the unique identification of the archive and the
document. It requires the datasets to be encoded in XML and the usage of
the OAi protocol to allow the usage of different data providers. In the
meantime, further universities and research institutes have joined the
initiative.


III. 

DINI calls on all all German Universities to make their local archives
available using this standard and to join the Open Archive initiative.


IV.

In the last few years, numerous local electronic archives have been created
on departmental, university or regional level in Germany. However, there
have only been few cases where the archive has been created with an agreed
compatibility concept in mind that could afford wide availability and
retrievability. There is hardly any persistence in the data and their
description through metadata is lacking most of the time. Cross-archive
document retrieval---if there is any---is very limited. This situation
impedes national and international scientific communication to a
significant degree. It requires urgent improvement.


V. 

Therefore DINI recommends:

1. Local full-text servers and repositories of scientific information will
   be offered without access restriction to the world. As a minimum, they
   will be fitted with an OAi compatible machine interface. This will lead
   to an opening of the local archive towards an international distribution
   of scientific works.

2. Persistent identifiers will be created for the archives and the datasets
   that they contain. Each dataset will be described with metadata.  There
   will be a standardised form (e.g. My Meta Maker) that will allow authors
   to create metadata for their documents in a standardised fashion.

3. In order to enable an efficient access with automated routines, the OAi
   protocol will be implemented.

4. Each archive will define its profile to express statements about
   contents and administration.

5. All German institutions who support scholarly communication through
   funding awards and other incentives, in particular the BLK, the BMBF,
   the DFG and the DFN, should make the implementation of the OA 
   specification as a precondition for the acceptance of applications
   for support.


DINI is committed to support the availability of documentation and
workshops to promote the OAi standards and to organise the exchange of
experience.

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