DRIVER Support Web

DRIVER Wiki

Restricted Pages

PmWiki Software

Contact Us

Powered by PmWiki

Main /

Open Access in Denmark

Repositories | Organisations | Projects | Journals | Copyright | Funding | Publishers | News | Other

Open Access Repositories

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. 

 Institutional Repositories | Subject Repositories

Institutional Repositories / CRIS

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 connects 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.

6 out of 8 universities’ research 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 from the 17. Marts 2008 DDF contains 171.035 records.

Some links to related resources:

Examples for PURE-based CRIS/IR:

Subject Repositories

There are four subject repositories in Denmark. Three of them can be found in OpenDOAR. Apart from these three one more exsists, in all four subject repositories either has a Danish focus or is based in Denmark.

These are:

They all use different software and there is no interrelationship between them sharing experience. One of them is not OAI-compliant.

Open Access Organisations/Groups

is working on Open Access initiatives in Denmark. Early 2008 they will release a OA Roadmap. DEFF is also cooperating with Knowledge Exchange in collaboration with JISC, SURF and DFG on joint initiatives on OA.

On the institutional level, 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 Projects/Initiatives

Open Access is gaining momentum in Denmark at the moment according to this article Dorch & Christensen Dalsgaard (2008)

DEFF is working on an OA Roadmap for Denmark which is expected to be launched in April/May 2008.

On a Joint Nordic level Denmark is participating in a couple of Open Access projects in the Nordbib programmes

Open Access Journals

Looking at DOAJ.org you will find nine OA Danish OA journals http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournals&hybrid=&query=Denmark

But the criteria for DOAJ is that all content should be OA without any delay. This excludes a number of Danish e-journals that are on the transition to OA. Typically they are smaller journals in Danish that has a long tradition and therefore are slow adapters. However they are incredibly important for breaking the ice by showing other hesitating journals that it can be done. Some of these journals are hosted by an OJS based service that was started in 2004 as a part of the DEFF epublishing project Etss project(in Danish only)

The OJS based services are at the moment

Copyright

DEFF has plans to adopt the JISH/SURF founded Copy Right Toolbox

Funding Policies

Institutional

  • Technical University of Denmark has a OA mandate policy.

More Danish universities are moving in the same direction.

This could be researched more

Publishers and Open Access

Danish publisher Museum Tusculanum is participating in the OAPEN project together with:

Amsterdam University Press Georg-August Universitat Gottingen Manchester University Press Presses Universitaires de Lyon Firenze University Press University of Amsterdam University of Leiden

Current Local News & Events

Coming...

Other Topics

[Start text here.]

Contributor's contact details

Mikael K. Elbæk, Technical Information Center of Denmark http://orbit.dtu.dk/query?person=41294

Page last modified: March 26, 2008, at 11:46 AM