Z e i t s c h r i f t f ü r i n n o v a t i o n - Lemmens Medien Gmbh

46 forschungsinformation IV
Luckily, the NARCIS project could
benefit from the organisational
network created during the
DARE programme. The various
DARE working groups had been
maintained, with the participants
meeting regularly to agree on
formats, discuss problems, et
cetera.
wissenschaftsmanagement 6 • november/dezember • 2008
In the final stage of the DARE programme an ambitious project called “HunDAREd thousand”
was started. The aim was to upload 100,000 full-text objects into DAREnet within a year. The
focus of this project was on the doctoral theses of young scholars. The aim of this so-called
“Promise of Science” project was to set up a national doctoral e-thesis gateway and populate it
with 10,000 full-text e-theses before the end of 2006.
In September 2006 Promise of Science was launched, and in January 2007 DAREnet also achieved
DARE’s final goal, the HunDAREd thousand project. At the time DAREnet contained a total of
103,429 objects.
From 1 January 2007, the completion date of the DARE programme, KNAW Research Information
has been responsible for the DAREnet portal with the intention of integrating it with the Dutch
Research Database into the scientific portal NARCIS.
Dutch Research Database – NOD
The Dutch Research Database, or NOD, is the national Current Research Information System
(CRIS). NOD is a database which is publicly available online with information on scientific research
(programmes and projects), researchers (addresses and expertise) and research institutes
(with profiles). The database covers all scientific disciplines and gives access to university
and non-university research information.
NOD is populated using a decentralized concept for collecting research information. Researchers
have to submit their research information to their university’s or institute’s system only once. All universities
use the Metis-system (Management Information Systems). Other sources are the systems
of funding organisations, information submitted by researchers, information on websites et cetera.
In July 2008 the NOD contains information on over 40,000 researchers of whom 8,000 are
professors and 10,000 are researchers with expertise. There are over 41,000 descriptions of
research programmes and projects, of which 21,000 refer to current research. There is also
information on 3,200 research institutes.
DAREnet and NOD integrated into NARCIS
To join DAREnet and NOD into one scientific portal it was necessary to solve organisational as
well as technical problems. Issues such as formats, interoperability, and compatibility needed to
be addressed.
Luckily, the NARCIS project could benefit from the organisational network created during the
DARE programme. The various DARE working groups had been maintained, with the participants
meeting regularly to agree on formats, discuss problems, et cetera.
Information harvesting from the different systems was carried out using the OAI-PMH protocol.
Since the DARE community had already implemented OAI-PMH, it took little effort to implement
the protocol for NOD too. Through OAI-PMH, NARCIS builds an index of the metadata stored in
the Institutional Repositories and in NOD. When the end user wants to access an item, the actual
data is retrieved from the systems in real time.
Dutch Academic Information Domain
Within the framework of international collaboration provided by Knowledge Exchange (KE), a
new concept has been developed for connecting information from Current Research Information