An International Workshop
Creating the Information Commons for e-Science:
Toward Institutional Policies and Guidelines for Action
 UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France
1-2 September 2005


Case Study:

INRIA Objectives, Policy and Actions for eSciences

Anne-Marie Vercoustre, Senior Scientist, INRIA-Rocquencourt (http://www.inria.fr/)

INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, has launched in April 2005 an Open Archive dedicated to its scientific publications. INRIA is committed to the "archive open initiative" since it signed the Berlin declaration on "free access to knowledge in exact sciences, life sciences, human and social sciences", on July 25, 2004.

INRIA is convinced that such an open archive will increase its scientific visibility and impact, keep track of INRIA's scientific output, and be of use to the whole scientific community. INRIA's Open Archive is part of the HAL Open Archive, produced by the CCSD (Center for Direct Scientific Communication) (http://www.ccsd.cnrs.fr/) of CNRS, originally for physicists. INRIA is now collaborating with the CCSD for the future evolution of HAL [Hyper Articles Online]. By signing a framework agreement with CNRS, INRIA will build a pool of its scientific production, based on a self-archiving approach from research scientists.

HAL-INRIA is one of the recent outcomes of the DISC (Direction for Scientific Information and Communication), an INRIA department created in 2001, for defining and implementing INRIA policy regarding the access and dissemination of Scientific Information. DISC objectives include:

  • Develop access to and dissemination of Scientific Information
  • Create a large corpus of Scientific and Institutional content
  • Promote INRIA and its research advances to a wide audience
  • Facilitate the internal communication

DISC staff counts about 30 people involved in regular tasks (such as running the documentation centers, publishing several newsletters), as well as in innovative projects such as the Open Archive and the exploitation of the Scientific Activity Report.

After introducing INRIA, its context and objectives, especially regarding e-Sciences, the presentation will detail the benefits and challenges of the INRIA Open Archive.