Frequently Asked Questions about the DRIVER project

The DRIVER project finished in December 2009 and was set up with a large number of international partners to help the establishment and development of the European open access repository infrastructure. Below are frequently asked questions about the DRIVER project.

Presentations by DRIVER partners on developments in DRIVER are available on the presentations webpage and the presentation titled The DRIVER initiative for networking repositories is particularly recommended as an explanation of what the project was about.

If these do not answer your questions please contact the DRIVER Helpdesk.

 

There is no national group/project coordinating the development of repositories in my country. What can DRIVER do to help?

As a European project DRIVER helped to provide a unified voice for the repository community in Europe and lobbied policy makers on behalf of the community. with the closure of the driver project, much of this role has been taken on by the Consortium of Open Access Repositories -- COAR -- which itself grew out of DRIVER.

Through the experience of its partners in the development of national networks e.g. DAREnet, DINI, Archives Ouvertes /HAL and SHERPA, DRIVER provided advice to national initiatives and groups in the development of such networks as well as providing support through the DRIVER Support website and Wiki.

The DRIVER Support website is being maintained at three years after the end of the DRIVER continues to provide links to national groups/projects and services where they exist project and although its role as a source of news and information has finished.

DRIVER worked with national groups to facilitate the development of national coordination websites and their collaboration with the DRIVER Support website.

The DRIVER Wiki continues to provide a space for contributions from the general repository community. Information on individual repositories, local projects, events or news may be added to the Wiki to inform the wider community. Where national coordinating groups/projects do not exist the Wiki may provide a platform for their initial development.

Repository managers often face issues in the day-to-day management of a repository that are not easily addressed by standard information sources. During the DRIVER project, the DRIVERMentor service was made available to developers and managers of institutional repositories across Europe. The purpose of this service was to introduce developers and managers of institutional repositories to their peers on a one-to-one basis in the belief that the sharing of experiences can assist others. Although the service has now been discontinued, it is hoped that the example of the service may inspire national coordination of a similar mentor service, or even the creation of national representative bodies. An example of such a body is UKCoRR, based in the UK.

DRIVER Technical Support for the DRIVER Search Service continues. OAI-PMH allows a minimum level of interoperability between repositories and services. However this level of interoperability is not sufficient to allow the development of high quality services such as search, citation etc. The DRIVER Guidelines have been developed to allow such services to be developed. Any repository manager can download and implement these guidelines. Hence regardless of whether there is a coordinating national group/project in your own country your repository can be integrated into the DRIVER infrastructure and its contents made available by DRIVER and associated services.

DRIVER worked with software developers to facilitate the implementation of the Guidelines.

The DRIVER Guidelines can be downloaded from the DRIVER Support website . A validator tool is available to allow repository managers to check their repository for conformance to the Guidelines as well as for conformance to standard OAI-PMH functionality and for OAI-PMH functionalities specific to DRIVER issues. Questions on the Guidelines can be directed to the DRIVER Helpdesk.

DRIVER Search provides searches of full-text only records, a feature not currently available from existing services such as OAIster or Google Scholar. DRIVER can be customised to search only selected repositories. Hence DRIVER Search provide a national search service or subject searching.

It is important to remember that any repository or network of repositories can benefit from DRIVER advice and information and, if compliant with the Guidelines, can be included in the DRIVER infrastructure and services. Hence DRIVER has benefits for global repository community.

 

My country/region already has a national/regional network. How can our network benefit from DRIVER? Is it too late now the project has closed?

Many of the benefits listed above also apply for existing networks, particularly in the use of the DRIVER Search Service.

Where regional networks and local projects exist within a country there is often no single online website available to view Open Access and repository efforts within that country. DRIVER has completed two successive inventory studies of repository development in Europe and the DRIVER Wiki provides a common space where information on repository projects and groups can be found and continually updated by the repository community, even though the project has now ended.

DRIVER Technical Support: Again the benefits of DRIVER outlined above apply to existing national and regional networks. Further DRIVER is working with national and regional networks to develop translations of the DRIVER Guidelines in all European languages.

The DRIVER technical team will liaise with national and regional networks who wish to be included in the DRIVER infrastructure and resultant services to minimise the effort required for such networks to meet the DRIVER Guidelines. For further information on the DRIVER Guidelines please visit the DRIVER Support website. Assistance and advice on implementing the Guidelines is available from the DRIVER Guidelines Helpdesk.

Cross European support for open access is also being provided by the OpenAIRE project, which itself has come out of the original DRIVER project.

Who were the partners in the DRIVER project?

The DRIVER partnership consisted of ten partners with close contacts with external projects and service providers. Information on the DRIVER partners and their contact details is available from the DRIVER Project website.

Is there a role for subject repositories in DRIVER and will DRIVER offer subject specific services?

As mentioned earlier, any repository or network of repositories can benefit from DRIVER advice and information and, if compliant with the Guidelines, can be included in the DRIVER infrastructure and services. Hence subject repositories meeting the DRIVER Guidelines can already benefit from DRIVER and are invited to do so.

As identified in the DRIVER Inventory Study, search services and, in particular subject-specific services are needed by the research community. DRIVER Search offers a range of features to support the research community and can be customised to search particular repositories and subject searching will be available by the end of this year.

I provide services for the repository and research community e.g. repository software, search services. What can I learn from the DRIVER experience?

In the rapidly evolving repository landscape, a unified approach and implementation is needed to ensure high level interoperability and retrieval of content.

DRIVER provides such a unified approach and, as the largest initiative of its kind worldwide, is leading the way. Hence DRIVER Guidelines and technical infrastructure are expected to influence the development of repositories and associated services worldwide.

The DRIVER aggregator and associated technologies will allow the DRIVER Search service and as well as third party search providers such as OAIster, BASE, and Google to provide more sophisticated searching e.g. full text only records, in an efficient and timely manner. This is possible through the implementation of the DRIVER Guidelines which improve available metadata and through technologies and services developed by DRIVER to simplify the use of this metadata by service providers.

Last updated: 04-Feb-2010