OPUS is an

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Ope ...

package under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...

used for creating

Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre o ...

repositories that are compliant with the

Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a protocol developed for harvesting metadata descriptions of records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives. An implementation of OAI ...

. It provides tools for creating collections of digital resources, as well as for their storage and dissemination. It is usually used at universities, libraries and research institutes as a platform for institutional repositories.

History

OPUS, originally an acronym for the Online Publikationsverbund der Universität Stuttgart, was developed with the support of the

Deutsches Forschungsnetz Deutsches Forschungsnetz ("German Research Network"), usually abbreviated to DFN, is the German national research and education network (NREN) used for academic and research purposes. It is managed by the scientific community organized in the vo ...

(DFN) in 1997 and 1998 at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wi ...

Library. OPUS is used at many universities and library networks. The (BSZ) took over development from University of Stuttgart Library, however, since December 2010, the (KOBV) has taken over the development and management of the project at the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). In

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

, the OPUS software is the most commonly used for the operation of open access repositories (according to a survey carried out in 2012, 77 repositories were based on OPUS). OPUS-based repositories may either be hosted and operated by universities on their own, or as part of hosting services provided by the German library network. The KOBV provides hosting for more than 35 instances of OPUS. Apart from Germany, OPUS is also used in Serbia by two research institutes.

Development

The current version, OPUS 4, is being developed by the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV) at the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). The earlier development was coordinated by the Library Service Centre for Baden-Württemberg (BSZ) and the Stuttgart University Library. Major partners have included the

Saxon State and University Library Dresden The Saxon State and University Library Dresden (full name in german: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden), abbreviated SLUB Dresden, is located in Dresden, Germany. It is both the regional library (german: ...

(SLUB),

Bielefeld University Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization ...

Library,

Saarland University Saarland University (german: Universität des Saarlandes, ) is a public research university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in si ...

and State Library Saarbrücken (SULB), University Library of the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV) and University Library Centre of North Rhine-Westphalia (HBZ).

Technology

OPUS 3.x was written in

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

4. The current version, OPUS 4, is developed in PHP (version 5.3) and is based on the Zend Framework and the search engine

Solr Solr (pronounced "solar") is an open-source enterprise-search platform, written in Java. Its major features include full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, database integration, NoSQL features a ...

. Data are stored in a

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

database. Both versions are designed for LAMP environments.

Functionality

* OPUS is a simple repository system for various types of objects and formats. These can be deposited, managed and provided with descriptive information ( metadata) via a web interface. The objects themselves are not processed on the server side except for full-text search. Metadata can be harvested by different search engines (e.g OAI service providers,

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

). * OPUS supports Uniform Resource Names (URN) for persistent identification of objects. * OPUS has a

license A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

module; various types of licenses ( Digital Peer Publishing,

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has releas ...

, etc.) can be set up. * OPUS supports OAI-PMH 2.0 protocol. * OPUS supports XmetaDiss, the metadata set of the

German National Library The German National Library (DNB; german: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to colle ...

for online dissertations and post-doctoral theses. * OPUS supports XmetaDissPlus, the metadata set of the Library Service Center Baden-Württemberg for online dissertations and post-doctoral theses * OPUS uses

checksum A checksum is a small-sized block of data derived from another block of digital data for the purpose of detecting errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. By themselves, checksums are often used to verify dat ...

s to ensure data integrity

References

External links

*
OPUS 4
at KOBV * {{Authority control Digital library software Free institutional repository software Free software programmed in PHP