The aim of the project is to establish sustainable structures for exchange and collaboration between users of the existing publication infrastructure Open Encyclopedia System (OES) in the form of an OES community. As part of the project, processes will be initiated and structured to enable the OES user group to develop sustainable solutions for infrastructural tasks in a demand-orientated and collaborative manner for this purpose.

Since 2019, various online reference networks have been realised with OES, increasingly also by external institutions/projects. Providing an open source software, which has been developed in-house, to third parties poses new challenges to coordinating cross-locational code development. In particular, one has to ensure that it is in line with the needs of (potential) OES users and issues of software sustainablilty. This transition from ‘centralised’ to self-organised structures, based on division of tasks and collaborative processes, is supported and moderated by the project.

An analysis of existing information infrastructures with "distributed responsibility" provides an overview of models and success factors for collaborative development and maintenance. In workshops with OES users, information and communication structures and concepts for the collaborative further development of OES will be developed, and forms of work for long-term exchange and cross-location cooperation (OES community) after the end of project funding will be established. This includes agreeing on self-organised negotiation processes as well as describing and defining responsibilities.

Project Duration

01.03.2025 - 28.02.2027

Funding

German Research Foundation (DFG), LIS, VIGO (GEPRIS entry)

Project Team

Dr. Brigitte Grote (PI / FUB-IT)

Gesche Wahlen (Project Coordination / FUB-IT)

Contact: info@open-encyclopedia-system.org