DRIVER infrastucture software release is available now!

DRIVER, the Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research is proud to announce the software release D-NET v. 1.0. The first of its kind, 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).

DRIVER Consortium’s mission is to expand its content base with high quality Open Access research output, as well as provide support for repository managers and state-of-the art services for the end-user. By building a robust network of content providers, enhanced with the set of services DRIVER offers, the software’s openness of the DRIVER infrastructure has encouraged service providers to develop new applications on top of the basic services. Prototypes of such applications, built to replicate DART Europe DEEP (UK) and RECOLECTA (Spain) portals over the European Information Space, can be accessed respectively at

http://search.dart.driver.research-infrastructures.eu
http://search.recolecta.driver.research-infrastructures.eu.

This threefold interaction between many European stakeholders, including research institutions, centers for IT research and strategic partners from the repository community, positions DRIVER as the foremost European portal for scholarly research.

The European Information Space offers support to three groups of users:

• The researcher, reader, public. From the DRIVER portal, apart from advanced searching and browsing options, the user can register with the system in order to activate his/her user profile and get alerts, register to collections, subscribe to communities and more services to come.
• The repository manager. Guidelines to repository development are offered to those who wish to set up a repository. In a web-based registration process that utilizes an automated validation tool, the repository manager gets feedback on the status of his repository, and suggestions on quality improvements via a personalized support service at the DRIVER helpdesk. Web and wiki-tools update the national status of repository development, providing a network of country representatives and repository managers who interact with European colleagues through the driver website and national contacts.
• The service provider. National consortia, subject-based projects and individual repository developers can act as service providers on top of the basic DRIVER infrastructure, by enriching and/or deploying D-NET v. 1.0 software.

The software:

The DRIVER D-NET v. 1.0 software is released under the Open Source Apache license with accompanying documentation, and with (limited to capacity) technical support by the DRIVER Consortium technical partners. The infrastructure software is designed to be “open”, which means that new service typologies, exposing functionalities not currently available in DRIVER, can be easily integrated with existing services. DRIVER Consortium policies require that all new DRIVER service software, produced by DRIVER Consortium partners or third-party service providers, should be released under the same Open Source Apache license and included in the DRIVER software package.

In particular, the DRIVER software can be used for two main reasons:

• Deploying new services on top of an operational DRIVER infrastructure Running instances of the DRIVER Infrastructure can be enriched in any moment with new service instances so as to empower or expand the available functionalities.

  Examples are:

  1. Deployment and configuration of customized portals for designated communities over the aggregated data (e.g. a portal over national repositories or over subject-driven content, such as RECOLECTA and DART Europe DEEP above);
  2. Deployment of new aggregation services so as to distribute and delegate harvesting and aggregating activities to specialized DRIVER National or Community Correspondents, carrying out their tasks over an assigned selection of repositories.

• Deploying a new DRIVER infrastructure to serve other service providers and communities

The D-NET v. 1.0 software release is also made available to any organization willing to run independent installations of the DRIVER infrastructure. In this case the interested organization would be responsible of the maintenance of such a system.

To download the D-NET v 1.0 software check here.