Policy

The strategic goal of the National Documentation Centre is the quantitative and qualitative increase in Greek digital scientific and cultural content. Principles and policies adopted are specifically designed to enhance its activities in this direction.

Free circulation of knowledge and Public Digital Space

As knowledge and culture are public goods, EKT promotes the circulation of knowledge to strengthen the economy and society:

• It applies the principles of Open Access to scientific content. Open Access is free, immediate, permanent and, as far as possible, free of any charge and most copyright restrictions on online access to digital academic and scientific content.

• It promotes the principles of Open Science. Open Science is an integrated environment in which results obtained from publicly funded research can be made accessible to the public in digital form by researchers, governments, research funders and the scientific community itself without any or minimum restrictions. Thus, accelerating research and business activities while strengthening transparency and social control, co-operation and innovation.

• It interconnects the knowledge-intensive industries with creative industries and entrepreneurship, enabling Greek participation in developments on European and international levels. In this way, facilitating free dissemination and use of digital content of knowledge producers via the Digital Single Market.

• It contributes to shaping a Digital Public Space for the most effective means of disseminating digital content produced with public funding, cultivating a culture of content availability as a public service and providing solutions to licensing issues, business models and creating stakeholder networks in the value chain.

EKT applies an Open strategy on all levels, with:

• awareness campaigns for open access to scientific and public information and its exploitation, open data, content and software (NISRT, SaaS, Creativity, LAPSI 2.0, OpenAIRE, MEDOANET)

• use of open standards and technology for interoperability and sustainability of the organisation's infrastructure

• support and co-ordination of open access policies, content and data on a national and European level (MEDOANET, RECODE, PASTEUR4ΟΑ)

•  promotion of reuse of public information through co-ordination of working groups for open public information, open licences and standardisation on a European level (LAPSI 2.0)

• systematic documentation of intellectual property rights of resources to which EKT has access, so as to ensure open availability through one of the Creative Commons licences ( SaaS, NISRT)

• aggregation and open availability of scientific and cultural content and data through electronic repositories infrastructure and electronic open access publishing (NISRT, SaaS, OpenABEKT, SearchCulture, OpenArchives)

• accountability, transparency, effective management, measurable results

• adoption of cutting-edge technology and open software

Cutting-edge technology and 'Green’ Information

To ensure the sustainability of its actions, EKT has adopted cutting-edge technologies and modern business models. For its repository services and openABEKT, it uses cloud computing and Software as a Service.

In addition, the technological infrastructure and information systems employed by EKT use Green It or Green Computing. Technical design, structure, operation and availability of information infrastructures and systems used in 'Green IT' are intended to improve management of energy needs in such a way as to use alternative sources of energy which respect the environment. They align economical sustainability and the improved efficiency of the infrastructure with social and moral responsibilities arising from the need to reduce energy and an environmental footprint.

Good practices and compliance with international standards

Thirty years of experience and acquired expertise has resulted in EKT’s use of standard description formats and data documentation.
It has developed formats for the documentation of all types of material (Texts, Maps, 2D & 3D objects, Sound, Video, Datasets, Musical scores), as well as controlled vocabularies and standardised terms. The formats meet all the individual needs of a wide variety of scientific and cultural institutions and collections with heterogenic material: archives, museums, libraries and electronic publications.
Data description and controlled vocabularies are based on standard international formats for metadata, file authorities, and thesauri, covering the needs of standardised digital and conventional content management, for library catalogues, repository systems and their availability as linked open data (LOD).
Documentation is in user-friendly forms with upgraded features, incorporating standardised vocabularies which support the inclusion of multilingual metadata, managing user licences and intellectual property rights and providing help with completing simple and clear documentation for each field.

In co-operation with the Managing Authority of the Operational Programme ‘Digital Convergence’ (NSRF), EKT has set standards by which to certify the content of beneficiaries of funding, compliance with international standards and interoperability protocols. Such action has resulted in the successful use of standards throughout the production chain, including availability and preservation ensuring interoperability with other systems and aggregated content resulting in sustainability of public investment. The specifications with which content is checked before aggregation is in line with current good practices, so that Greek content can be incorporated into the single European digital content and services area.