News

Wanted: projects that enhance knowledge-sharing in higher education

2007-06-09

Three calls for projects under the SURFshare programme

SURFfoundation issued three Calls for Tender on Friday 6 July, challenging the education sector to submit project proposals focusing on three different topics: collaboratories (web-based collaborative environments), open access plus (publication of research data) and knowledge dissemination for universities of applied sciences. The deadline for submissions is 30 September 2007. A total of EUR 420,000 has been made available for the projects.

SURFfoundation is calling for tenders for short-term pilot projects that focus on innovating the process of communication and collaboration in higher education and enhancing the knowledge infrastructure at universities of applied sciences. The proposals should involve the following:

• Collaboratories: web-based collaborative environments that enable researchers based in different locations to work together and share their knowledge and sources;
• Open Access plus: publishing articles or other research publications such as dissertations along with their underlying research data, models or visualisations; other possibilities include open review systems or a structured open annotation process.
• Applied science knowledge dissemination: improving the dissemination of practical knowledge accrued and developed at universities of applied sciences, not only among the universities themselves but also between them and the public and private sectors.

The Calls for Tender have been issued under the SURFshare programme, the successor to the DARE programme (which concluded in late 2006). Whereas the emphasis within DARE was on creating a network of Digital Academic Repositories, in the SURFshare programme the main focus is on Sharing of Academic Resources. DARE resulted in open access to more than 125,000 scientific and scholarly articles via www.darenet.nl. SURFshare aims to make the datasets, simulations, models, visualisations and other material used in research available in addition to the published results (working designation: enriched publications). It also intends to facilitate the research process by means of "collaboratories" (web-based collaborative environments).

SURFfoundation has made a total of EUR 420,000 available for the projects. Projects involving Collaboratories and Open Access will be awarded a maximum of EUR 60,000 each, and projects involving Applied Science Knowledge Dissemination EUR 80,000 each. Matching funds are required, with SURFfoundation covering a maximum of 50% of the costs. The deadline for submitting project proposals is 30 September 2007.

For more information please contact Annemiek van der Kuil: vanderkuil@surf.nl