Science needs new forms of collaboration with publishers to facilitate the open access transformation of the German scientific publication landscape called for by the Alliance of Scientific Organisations in Germany and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The DFG has been supporting the negotiation of so-called Alliance licenses between libraries and publishers since 2011. These licenses incorporate extensive rights relating to open access archiving: both authors and the institutions that represent them are able to make articles published in licensed journals freely accessible in repositories of their choice with only short embargo periods or none at all.
Building on these open access components, the “DeepGreen” project sponsored by the DFG is demonstrating a possible new model for cooperating with publishers: DeepGreen is based on the automated delivery of article data from publishers to repositories. The goal is to actually facilitate online access to the majority of the scientific publications in specialist journals that licensing legislation allows to be made freely accessible online.

From 2016 to the end of 2017, DeepGreen used prototypes to test the feasibility of this goal. Now, during the second phase (2018-2020), the project aims to establish the most highly automated workflow possible in cooperation with publishers, authorised libraries and other institutions. The technical basis of this workflow is a central intermediary data distribution station which guarantees the automated, legally watertight delivery of metadata, including full texts, from the publishers directly to authorised institutional repositories. The initial aim is to establish a national service based on binding agreements with publishers and libraries that implements the terms of the Alliance licenses in a holistic manner. The possibility of applying the DeepGreen concept to other forms of license (FID licenses, consortium licenses, gold open access agreements) is also being examined. An additional concept currently at the planning stage comprises automated delivery to subject-specific repositories and research information systems (RIS).

The Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV), the Bavarian Library Network (BVB), the Bavarian State Library (BSB), the libraries of the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) and the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin), and the Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) are all partners in this project.

More information about the DeepGreen project is available at
https://www.oa-deepgreen.de/

Culturegraph is a service that links and facilitates access to metadata in the German and Austrian library networks and the German National Library. Culturegraph thus provides an inter-network platform for services and projects relating to data analysis and data networking.

The service concept involves the opening of scattered, closed data sources to facilitate the cross-linking of bibliographic data, thesauruses, classifications and authority data. Data analysis processes such as clustering, classification and statistical evaluations can for example be used to compare data, transfer cataloguing information relating to similar works, or obtain information from external sources to enrich data records.

It is already possible to display clusters of similar works in order to facilitate the adoption of content cataloguing data from other items in the cluster. Work is still under way on matching Culturegraph and ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) data with the aim of using the latter to supplement entries in the Integrated Authority File.

Detailed information on Culturegraph is available here.

The Combined Consortial Library Index (Gemeinsame Verbünde-Index – GVI) is a back-end service provided by the Consortium of Library Networks (AGV). The GVI comprises the bibliographic data of all the German networks and the data of the German Union Catalogue of Serials (ZDB) and German National Library. Searches are performed using the Integrated Authority File. Its most important application is online interlibrary lending in Germany. For this purpose, the GVI is integrated into the respective network-specific German interlibrary lending portals. This means it is no longer necessary to perform separate searches in each German network database.

All members of the AGV contribute equally to the success of the project. Each German network delivers its data to the GVI. The Consortium of Library Networks is responsible for strategic planning (steering committee). The AGV’s Rules of Procedure apply. The Library Service Centre Baden-Württemberg (BSZ), the Hesse Library Network (HeBIS) and the Cooperative Library Network Berlin Brandenburg (KOBV) are cooperatively responsible for the operational management of the GVI (administrative office).

The GVI runs in productions in various application.
Important additional functions such as deduplication and the integration of synonym lists were made available in September 2018.

Further information can be obtained on https://www.agv-gvi.de or by sending an e-mail to info@agv-gvi.de.

The databases of the two head offices of the Library Service Centre Baden-Württemberg (BSZ) and the head office of the Common Library Network (VZG) have now been amalgamated into a joint database with more than 180 million records; this has been given the working title “K10plus”. Since production got under way at the end of March 2019, the libraries connected have been cataloguing their collections in this data pool and using it as a source of metadata for their systems..

The wider, homogeneous data base of K10plus will make the provision of scientific information more efficient. It will also open up new possibilities for data reuse and automated cataloguing. K10plus sets standards and provides access to scientific authority data and thesauruses.

K10plus acts as a data broker and data hub – both nationally and internationally. It supports both regional bibliographic tools and national/international structures including WorldCat. Specialised interests, particularly those of specialised information services funded by the DFG, are served by individual services tailored to the respective community.

Further information is available at https://www.bszgbv.de

K10plus-Zentral is an index back-end for bibliographic data containing more than 196 million data records. K10plus-Zentral is based on Solr and supports all user interfaces that can communicate with Solr. Access to K10plus-Zentral can be individually filtered using various criteria such as content or library holding/type of material. A rights management system ensures that all terms of use are complied with. The index is maintained in cooperation with the libraries. The back-end service can be used free of charge.

The Library Service Centre Baden-Württemberg (BSZ) and the head office of the Common Library Network (VZG) offer fee-based discovery services based on the discovery platform K10plus-Zentral: K10plus-Discovery. The hosting service provides the entire search environment including installation, operation, software updates and backups. The search interface can be customised for each institution. The access rights and selection of metadata are configured according to the institution's requirements. Metadata which is only licensed for the specific institution can also be integrated.

Further information is available at https://www.bszgbv.de