Development begins on new release of OPUS

Jan Steinberg, Development of OPUS 4 starts July, 1st 2008, message to SPARC-OAForum mailing list, May 9, 2008.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved funding of a new release of the institutional repository software OPUS. The project is carried out collaboratively by Stuttgart University Library, the Library Service Center Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg, Saarland University and State Library, Bielefeld University Library and Hamburg University of Technology Library. The partners closely co-operate with the State and University Library Dresden.

OPUS has been developed at Stuttgart University and is the most common software package for institutional repositories in Germany today (with more than 60 sites using it productively). Besides OAI it already provides interfaces to Online Library Catalogs, the German National Library (DNB), the national URN registry and to the print-on-demand service ProPrint.

Development in the project will enhance this integration into service oriented infrastructures for electronic publishing with special emphasis on the European DRIVER (Repositories Infrastructure Vision for European Research) and the German OA-Network developments. Furthermore it will look into the possibility of integrating or referencing primary scientific data and of connecting with current research information systems (CRIS). Technically development in the project will be based on the Zend framework.

The partners are actively involved with the work of the DINI Working Group on Electronic Publishing. All partners are committed to develop a stable new release 4.0 of the OPUS software which will be maintained and supported well beyond the project lifetime.

The project will be funded within the Division 'Scientific Library Services and Information Systems (LIS)' of the DFG for twelve months. The project starts July, 1st 2008.