SYNAT - the Polish National Research Content Infrastructure
Wojtek Sylwestrzak, ICMTomasz Rosiek, ICMTomasz Krassowski, ICM
Tartu, EstoniaJune 27, 2012
Agenda
What is Synat? Strategic reasoning:
status of Polish content infrastructure ICM experience – YADDA
Strategic goals: objectives and approach delivery and partners
Products: results to be accomplished key features: Infona and Synat
Future development: directions, ideas
Synat is... (1/2)
The Polish national strategic research programme to build an Interdisciplinary System for Interactive Scientific and Scientific-Technical Information
The nationwide open digital library environment being standardised way to create and maintain individual digital libraries (DLs)
The cooperation project of the leading universities, libraries, research institutes and museums
The initiative allowing future easy development and enhancement due to the open source development policy
Synat is... (2/2)
An information infrastructure development project, expected to seamlessly integrate Polish heterogeneous digital research content resources
An approach to facilitate knowledge exchange between Polish scholars
An easy way to publish research articles A platform to build various customised content
management systems
Strategic reasoning: status of Polish content infrastructure
Several autonomous institutional repositories – various data description formats and user interfaces
Lack of central, national multisearch engine – libraries use dedicated, mutually not interoperable software
Licensing issues and limitations – large part of content is licensed to be accessed exclusively by given institutions
Need for functionalities resulting from ICM experience with large repository projects – YADDA (>10m full-texts), Polish Scholarly Bibliography, DRIVER, OpenAIRE
Limited uptake of dLibra and Digital Libraries Federation (DLF) developed by Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre (c. 0.5m full-texts)
Strategic reasoning: ICM experience – YADDA
YADDA platform is a central national solution to address compatibility and availability issues in Polish science
Has a great impact towards building comprehensive national Virtual Library system
Hosts both publicly available and restricted access publications
Full text collections of Elsevier and Springer journals, also much more
Seamlessly handles several millions of full-texts (>10m research papers)
Integrates various sources in one system
Core platform for other services: e.g. EuDML
Some components used in DRIVER, OpenAire
Strategic goals:objectives and approach
Synat has a status of a research project, funded by the National Centre for Research and Development
We expect to implement the results of research and launch the system operationally
Three types of tasks are distinguished within the project Practical tasks – core development of the software
and implementation of the system Purely research tasks – the development of
algorithms and theoretical methods Structural tasks – administration of the project
delivery, marketing and management activities
Strategic goals:delivery and partners
Synat combines effort of leading Polish institutions developing digital library and repository systems
ICM, University of Warsaw(the project leader)
Warsaw University of Technology
Academic Computer Centre CYFRONET AGH
National Library of Poland
Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry Polish Academy of Science (PAS) – Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center
National Institute of Telecommunications
Institute of Computer Science, PAS
MIM, University of Warsaw
NASK
Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology
Wrocław University of Technology
Łazarski University
Jagiellonian University in Krakow
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw
Military University of Technology
WETI, Gdańsk University of Technology
Products: results to be accomplished
The Synat Platform (core)
Data Acquisition Module
(data supplier interface)
The Infona Portal (end user interface)
Data analysis, enrichment and enhancement
modules
Other extension modules
Modules for data exchange: interfaces and
protocols
Search options enhancement modules (e.g. semantic search, audio/ video search)
Scientific raw data support modules (e.g. store, analyse, domain specific
search)
Alternative front-end modules
Journal hosting service
application
Digital library hosting service
application
Supports searching & browsing functionalities Allows access to the content (hosted and external) Enhances DL group collaboration experience:
Enables publishing of users' content (e.g. papers) Empowers expression of opinions via discussion
tools and ranking best performers by rating of articles Facilitates knowledge sharing by sharing links to
articles and ability to create virtual collections of documents
Maintains quality of content by means of extensive error and abuse reporting functionalities
Products: key features of Infona portal (1/2)
Products: key features of Infona portal (2/2)
Products: key features of Synat platform (1/2) Scalability
Modular approach to system development allows both easy enhancement of system functionalities and virtually unlimited load scalability
Supports several millions of content records Allows to build a network of institutional repositories that
may be connected to the central core system Will allow attachment and detachment of services to the
whole system without downtimes Enables low-scale deployment, when needed – could
be used as a project or institution knowledge repository
Products: key features of Synat platform (2/2) Interoperability
Supports several data exchange formats and mechanisms in addition to own BWmeta data model
Enables metadata exchange between Synat and other systems, to enable search and browsing within all parts of the system
Open access policy Allows open access to content, supports access
control and licensing Open source software enables development and
integration of additional software modules
Future development: directions, ideas
Journal hosting service Software facilitating building
of websites for journals Publishing process automation Supports customisation of
layout and features Deployable in standalone or in
a software-as-a-service model Possible migration of data to
Synat platform
Digital library hosting service Software supporting
development and management of publication repositories for institutions
Deployable standalone or in a software-as-a-service model
Possible sharing of data with Synat platform
This work is partially supported by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBiR) under Grant No.
SP/I/1/77065/10 by the Strategic scientific research and experimental development program: SYNAT -
“Interdisciplinary System for Interactive Scientific and Scientific-Technical Information”.
Acknowledgements
Thank you for your attention
Questions / comments?