Denmark

The Open Access Repositories landscape in Denmark is characterised by decentralised OAI-PMH compatible Institutional Repositories with own search portals and few subject based repositories.

In Denmark there has been a strong focus on the development of current research information systems (CRIS) and all universities (except for IT-University) has a CRIS. The development of the CRIS' has been founded in the library community and has secured the development of CRIS/IR synergies, e.g. all the CRIS in DK also functions as OAI-PMH compatible digital repositories.

Although all of the CRIS systems are OAI-compatible some still connect from their CRIS to actual IR systems, like DSpace, or own developed software. This is done at Copenhagen Business School (own-developed) and at Roskilde University (DSpace). One of the reasons for this is to take advantage of built-in features of IR-software like download statistics, handle management features that until now has been mostly neglected by CRIS development.
Because the repositories are foremost CRIS and secondly Open Access Repositories the focus has been on the bibliographic metadata quality and coverage, but not on OA. This means that the repositories cover a high percentage of the universities production as bibliographic descriptions, but have few OA full texts. In late 2007, in connection with a project application, a small survey was conducted of the Danish IRs that showed an average of less then 10 % OA full texts in the repositories.
In early 2007 institutions of higher education and government research institutes merged, making it from more than 21 universities and government research institutes to 8 universities and three government research institutes. Of the 8 universities, 6 of them are using PURE , one is using Orbit and one does not have an OAR. Besides these universities there are institutions of higher education and government research institutes that did not merge. These have in general been slower in developing repositories, most likely because of not having the resources and expertise.

The research output of 6 out of 8 universities is exposed in the search portal DDF (The Danish National Research Database ) - covering approximately 80% of the public Danish research output as bibliographic records and less in full text. DDF has existed in different forms since 1988 and from the beginning it contained not only publication data but also projects, organisations and researcher profiles. But the old DDF was build on central deposit or batch upload that resulted in inefficient use of resources, low and inconsistent data quality and slow update. To solve these impediments DDF-MXD was released in 2006 as an XML exchange format and the national research portal changed from central deposit and batch upload service to an OAI service provider that harvest data from distributed repositories.

DDF-MXD is an extensive bibliographic format that includes classifications codes for document types, research level and peer review. DDF-MXD is the result of collaboration between key persons within the repository community in Denmark and is maintained by the DDF project management. New developments are discussed and tested in an informal communication between the people behind Orbit, PURE and DDF. Although many of the problems mentioned before, with data quality and maintenance, was solved with DD-MXD, it also meant that a heavier burden and responsibility was put on the data providers. From the very start this meant considerably fewer data providers could live up to the standards and the new format also didn't include projects from the beginning. As a consequence, two versions of DDF have been co-existing for two years. This is however going to change, as the majority have become data providers, DDF is opening a new front-end in April 2008 and will at the same time close down all other DDFs. The project management is also planning to develop a DDF-MXP format that will incorporate projects into DDF. As at March 2008 DDF contained 171.035 records.

There are four subject repositories in Denmark. Three of them can be found in OpenDOAR. Apart from these three one more exists. All four subject repositories either have a Danish focus or are based in Denmark. They all use different software and there is no interrelationship between them in sharing experience. One of them is not OAI-compliant.

In terms of initiatives, The Royal Library has appointed an OA coordinator to the University Library of Copenhagen. Copenhagen University Library on Open Access Also, the Universities Denmark (Professional Organisation for Danish univeristies) and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation have both appointed an OA contact person.
Open Access is gaining momentum in Denmark at the moment. For example, the Technical University of Denmark has an OA mandate policy.
More Danish universities are moving in the same direction.

On a Joint Nordic level Denmark is participating in a couple of Open Access projects in the Nordbib programmes.
Also, DEFF (Denmark's Electronic Research Library) has plans to adopt the JISC/SURF founded Copy Right Toolbox.

The DRIVER wiki may be a useful source of further information.

Are there developments in this country that you would like to inform the DRIVER community about? If so, please visit the DRIVER wiki. There you will find guest editors' contributions to the countries pages. Information about the easy process of editing pages and how to obtain a password can be found on the wiki under "PmWiki Software". We look forward to your visit.

 

This page is currently under development. If you have any additional information or relevant sources regarding the state of Open Access and Institutional Repositories in this country, please contact us.

Are there developments in this country that you would like to inform the DRIVER community about? If so, please visit the DRIVER wiki. There you will find guest editors' contributions to the countries pages. Information about the easy process of editing pages and how to obtain a password can be found on the wiki under "PmWiki Software". We look forward to your visit.

Last updated: 14-Nov-2008