Metadata

Open Archives Forum (OA-Forum)

Introduction

The Open Archives Forum (OA-Forum) was funded as an accompanying measure within the Information Societies Technology (IST) Programme, a theme of the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme managed by the Information Society Directorate-General of the European Commission.

OA-Forum provided a Europe-based focus for dissemination of information about European activity related to open archives and the Open Archive Initiative (OAI). It facilitated communication among IST projects, national initiatives and others interested in the open archive approach, building a community of interest. It provided stimulation for European involvement in the OAI and sought to ensure that validation of OAI specifications were co-ordinated within Europe, that the European perspective would be fully articulated within the OAI, and that European organisations are ready to exploit the benefits of the OAI approach.

Project Partners with UKOLN:

• Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie della Informazione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa (IEI-CNR) - Italy

• Rechenzentrum / Computing Center, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin (HUB) - Germany

The IST Project Factsheet on the OA-Forum is available in the RTD Projects Database of CORDIS at:
<URL:http://www.cordis.lu/ist/projects.htm>

More detailed information about the OA-Forum is available from the project's Web pages.
<URL:http://www.oaforum.org/>

Work on OA-Forum at UKOLN:

UKOLN contributed to all workpackages in the OA-Forum project, as well as coordinating the project. A brief description of each workpackage follows. The published documents are available from the OA-Forum website.

WP1: Project Management

UKOLN led this workpackage. The Final Project Report was published at the end of the project.

WP2: Technical Validation

WP2 provided an information source based on databases covering software tools, interoperability issues and current OAI implementations. It also undertook an evaluative review of the OAI metadata harvesting protocol and a formative evaluation of interoperating services. It contributed to and benefitted from the workshops help in WP4 Workshop Series. This workpackage is led by Computing Center, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin.

WP3: Organisational Validation

This UKOLN-led workpackage had as its purpose the development of an understanding of incentives for participation in open archives and make recommendations for sustainable business models. It also reviewed the sustainability of the OAI governance model with the intention of raising awareness of IPR and quality issues in the open archives context. It contributed to and benefited from the workshops held in WP4 Workshop Series.

WP4: Workshop Series

A series of OA-Forum workshops were held by this workpackage. The workshops drew on on the work of WP2 and WP3 in the preparation of workshop material. The workshops fed back into those workpackages for further analysis. This workpackage was led by Istituto di Elaborazione della Informazion.

WP5: Dissemination

The Dissemination workpackage was designed to improve communication and cooperation among open archive implementers by means including an OA-Forum web site. Its purpose was to work toward the sustainability of the OA-Forum or a successor service. This workpackage was led by Istituto di Elaborazione della Informazion.

UKOLN staff who worked on the OA-Forum project:

Jenny Taylor

Resource Co-ordinator
E-mail: j.taylor@ukoln.ac.uk

Philip Hunter

Research Officer (Project Co-ordinator)
E-mail: p.hunter@ukoln.ac.uk

Rachel Heery

Assistant Director (Team Leader, Research & Development)
E-mail: r.m.heery@ukoln.ac.uk

Leona Carpenter was also involved in the project (as Project Co-ordinator) until early 2003.