Knowledge Exchange

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Knowledge Exchange scholarly and scientific
information openly available on the internet
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This presentation

• Knowledge Exchange
• Context and Challenges
• Ambitions and Priorities
• Common Interest US Europe
• The presenter
• Bas Cordewener
• manager international collaboration,
  SURFfoundation
• cordewener_at_surf.nl

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Introduction

• Initiative established in 2005
• Members are four organisations which have
  responsibility for technology development in
  education and research within their nations
• Purpose is to add value to current activities to
  increase return on investment of funding
  partners and to improve quality of learning and
  teaching and research
• Method is structural knowledge exchange
  facilitated by staff stimulate expert networks
  and co-ordinated activities exchange strategies
  explore policy opportunities to speak with one
  voice

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Strategic Vision

• To make a layer of scholarly and scientific
  content openly available on the Internet
  (October 2006, Berlin)
• building an integrated repository infrastructure
• exploring new developments in the future of
  publishing
• facilitating integrated management services
  within education and research institutions
• supporting the European digital libraries agenda

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Achievements

• Collaboration makes a difference
• promoting Open Access via a petition to the
  European Commission
• exploring new content packages and innovative
  business and license models
• Community became involved
• experts working groups exchange and recommend
• participation from partner countries, across
  Europe and beyond
• Effective brokerage, sharing and exchange
• studies, networks, trends, stratregies
• comparing approaches, procedures, programmes

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Examples of community activities

• Open Access
• establishing an European evidence base of
  economics of Open Access
• promoting (the principles) of the License to
  Publish and License to Depot
• workshop for OA friendly publishers to improve
  transition-to-OA expertise
• participation of SPARC Europe
• Access Management
• regular exchanges and updates about national
  developments
• establishing (con)federations encouraging
  publishers to join
• promote use of SAML 2.0 (simpleSAMLphp)
• Institutional Repositories
• joint projects/actions on Enhanced Publications
  (e-theses dissertations) CRIS-OAR
  interoperability Persistent Identifiers
• participation of France, Sweden, Australia,
  Norway

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European context

• Aim is to transform the 23 countries in one
  transparent economic entity and information
  society
• Requirements
• interoperable and open areas for business,
  education, research, information
• flexibility and mobility of people, goods, work
  and information
• Policy drivers
• Bologna Declaration (1999)
• Bachelor Masters, mutual accreditation, quality
  assurance to support student mobility and
  educational flexibility
• Lisbon Strategy (2000)
• Europe aims to be a competitve and dynamic
  Knowledge Economy
• Berlin Declaration (2003)
• all university research output should be made
  openly available to the public

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European impact

• Positive developments
• Bologna Declaration
• national approaches are harmonising at great
  speed
• Berlin Declaration and EU projects like DRIVER
• a European approach to ownership of publicly
  funded knowledge is emerging
• EC significantly funds activities in Technology,
  Education and Research
• Challenge
• coordination
• national impact
• sustainability
• Realisation of a European e-infrastructure for
  Education and Research might benefit from being
  closer informed by national policy broader
  consultation needed

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European technology infrastructure?

• there is no blueprint for a European technology
  infrastructure
• in semi-federated Europe, research approaches,
  infrastructures and governance are diverse and
  not easily aligned
• diversity in available resources and expertise
  impacts the capacity and quality of existing
  national IT infrastructures
• existing national organisations influencing IT
  infrastructure policy should be involved
• researchers, as good pioneers, individually have
  less intrinsic interest to care for a generic
  technology infrastructure
• Above are drivers for establishing Knowledge
  Exchange

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Knowledge Exchange with ambition

• Potential
• at similar level of IT infrastructure provision
• leaders in technology infrastructure development
• able to share and develop in thought and action
• growing confidence to align strategies and
• speak with one voice
• Approach 2008-2010
• continued structural exchanges for mutual benefit
• focus on new priority areas (next slide)
• provide a source of expertise that can help shape
  policy of EU.

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Future Priorities

• Virtual Research Environments
• understand the many layers and interaction (GRID,
  collaboratories, data manipulation)
• focus on generic approaches, researchers needs,
  transnational ERA structures
• Primary Research Data
• involve various stakeholders in dialogue, raise
  awareness for preservation and access
• define challenges and changing roles, develop
  strategic policy
• European Digital Library
• inform partner investment in and support to
  digital libraries in order to develop
• strategies for content creation, including
  digitisation.
• registries of digital collections and services
• interoperability frameworks
• EC interaction
• frequent dialogue on relevant issues,
  contributing to the strategic planning cycle
• inform each other, so potentially strengthen
  European and national programmes

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US and Europe shared objectives

• Improve the user experience for US and EU
  scholars
• no limits to mobility, flexibility
• no limits to accessibility
• to increase quality
• Better serve the economical and societal needs
• integrated teaching learning and research
  environments
• better, faster research development and
  productive use
• better educated workforce
• Increase the return on investment in shaping the
  technology infrastructure
• build upon each others creativity, expertise and
  experiences
• effective and efficient use of resources
• provide options for and anticipate on
  interoperability

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US and Europe common interests (1)

• Bachelor Master system
• EU harmonisation includes
• accreditation
• European Credit Transfer System (ECTS),
• Diploma Supplement
• European Association for Quality Assurance in
  Higher Education (ENQA) quality reference
  framework
• Towards a global standard ?
• Federations
• National federations develop in many EU
  countries, concerning
• public and private service and content providers
• evolvement into federations of federations
• registration bodies and definitions of levels of
  trust.
• Trust development between US and Europe axis is
  essential ?

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US and Europe common interests (2)

• International developments
• Open Access principles / business models)
  development
• National and/or Institutional Repository
  interoperability standards development
• Now is the time for alignment ?
• International governance quality management
• a transparent environment (e.g. Repositories,
  Open Access, Federations, IPR) for stakeholders
  and actors that increasingly operate globally and
  need to work together
• encouragement for inspiring innovations is still
  needed (User Services, Business Models, Data
  Control) - developments have not yet reached
  their full potential
• build stability, manage expectations, define
  roles for service providers, information and
  content providers, registration organisations
  identity and security levels
• This can only be achieved crossing KE, EU, and US
  borders ?

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Questions or comments?

• More information on Knowledge Exchange website
  www.knowledge-exchange.info