Collaborations and Networks

All European Academies (ALLEA) is the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, representing more than 50 academies from over 40 EU and non-EU countries. Since its foundation in 1994, ALLEA speaks out on behalf of its members on the European and international stages, promotes science as a global public good, and facilitates scientific collaboration across borders and disciplines.

DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower serves as Chair of the ALLEA E-Humanities Working Group (2016-present). The group works to support and promote e-Humanities, and to contribute to the European Open Science agenda.

Find out more about DRI’s collaborations with ALLEA.

The Archives and Records Association, Ireland, (ARA) is the lead professional body for archivists, archive conservators and records managers in Ireland. It aims to support its membership through training, continued professional development, identification of employment opportunities, and professional help and advice.

Through its members the ARA is committed to working for high standards in the provision of and care of archives and effective management of record systems including the retrieval of information from them. DRI is an institutional member of ARA and occasionally co-hosts events.

Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury is an all-island and international collaborative research project working to create a virtual reconstruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland, which was destroyed in the opening engagement of the Civil War on June 30th, 1922.

DRI has signed a participatory agreement with the project. The agreement between Beyond 2022 and DRI will facilitate knowledge sharing and future cooperation on events and digital preservation initiatives.

Connecting Archaeology and Architecture in Europe (CARARE) aims to advance professional practice and foster appreciation of the digital archaeological and architectural heritage through the promotion for the public benefit of digitisation, connection, enhancement, and use of digital content nationally and internationally.

It supports the creation, connection, enhancement and use of digital archaeological and architectural heritage resources, for work, research, learning and for enjoyment.

Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is an international association with over 140 members and partners from around the world representing libraries, universities, research institutions, government funders and others.

COAR brings together the repository community and major repository networks in order build capacity, align policies and practices, and act as a global voice for the repository community.

DRI is a member of COAR.

CoreTrustSeal is an international, community based, non-governmental, and non-profit organisation promoting sustainable and trustworthy data infrastructures. It offers data repositories a core level certification based on the DSA–WDS Core Trustworthy Data Repositories Requirements catalogue and procedures.

DRI is certified by the Core Trust Seal, demonstrating that it reflects the core characteristics of trustworthy data repositories.

The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU), aims to enhance and support digitally-enabled research and teaching across the humanities and arts.

DRI is partnering with DARIAH-EU to make DRI outreach and training events accessible as external learning resources through DARIAH-Campus, a discovery framework and a hosting platform for DARIAH and DARIAH-affiliated offerings in training and education.

DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower is on the DARIAH Ireland Steering Committee, made up of individuals from institutions in Ireland who are in receipt of major European, Foundation, or Exchequer funding in the area of Digital Humanities and whose projects are in a position to support DARIAH activities, both in Ireland and at the wider European level.

DRI also collaborates with DARIAH-EU on knowledge transfer initiatives, and has featured in blogs related to our support for early career researchers such as ‘Exhibitions Inside Exhibitions with the Digital Repository of Ireland‘ (2020), and contributed to publications like ‘How to Facilitate Cooperation between Humanities Researchers and Cultural Heritage Institutions‘ (2019).

Datacite is a not-for-profit organisation with the aim to establish easier access to research data on the Internet, to increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scholarly record, and to support data archiving that will permit results to be verified and re-purposed for future study.

DRI partnered with Datacite to assign Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as persistent identifiers for all objects in the Repository. Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are a way of maintaining a persistent link to a digital object and are a key component of FAIR data. The DRI uses the DataCite service to both mint and store the PIDs in the form of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for ingested digital objects. The use of persistent identifiers allows DRI members to publish their content in a way that is citable and internationally recognised by the research community, in turn increasing their visibility in the academic community. DRI is the first Irish institution to mint DOIs for its digital objects.

The Digital Scholarship Network Ireland (DSN-IE) is a national network to support and develop digital and open scholarship. The DSN-IE brings together staff of the Irish Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) sector and research-active organisations who are involved in the development and delivery of digital and open scholarship services.

The aim is to encourage partnerships and skills development across all GLAM organisations in Ireland. The DSN-IE has been established by the CONUL Research Group with the endorsement of the CONUL Board. The DRI is part of the DSN-IE network.

DRI is a member of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), a not-for-profit company established in 2002 as a collaboration between a number of agencies operating in the UK and Ireland interested in the preservation of digital information. DPC is an advocate and catalyst for digital preservation, enabling its members to deliver resilient long-term access to content and services, and helping them to derive enduring value from digital collections. They raise awareness of the importance of the preservation of digital material and the attendant strategic, cultural, and technological issues.

DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower has organised several training and partnership events with DPC, was a member of the DPC Advocacy and Communication Committee (2016-2018), and is one of the expert judges on the DPC’s international Digital Preservation Awards judging panel. A DRI representative sits on the DPC Workplace Development Subcommittee (2021-present) and on the DPC Advocacy and Community Engagement Subcommittee (2022-present). DRI staff are also certified on a number of DPC digital preservation skills training courses.

Find out more about DRI’s collaborations with DPC.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an open research commons for European researchers and citizens that aims to federate existing research data infrastructures in Europe and realise a web of FAIR data and related services, making research data interoperable and machine actionable following the FAIR guiding principles.

The DRI has been directly involved in helping to shape the EOSC in a number of ways. From a policy and scoping perspective, DRI’s Director Natalie Harrower was one of the authors of Turning FAIR into Reality: Final Report and Action Plan from the European Commission Expert Group on FAIR Data  This report set out key actions for building FAIR research outputs, practices and services, and has provided a blueprint for subsequent European Commission funded EOSC projects, such as FAIRsFAIR and the ‘EOSC 5b’ regional projects.

Following this expert group Dr. Harrower also served on the EOSC Executive Board’s FAIR Working Group. DRI’s longstanding collaborations with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) have also worked to support aspects of the EOSC, particularly in terms of forging connections between different research communities and EOSC goals. Projects here include RDAEU4 (2018-2020), RDA4EOSC (2020-2021), and EOSC Future (2021-2023).

Finally, the work of the National Open Research Forum (NORF) is aligned with the principles of the EOSC.

The Europeana Network Association (ENA) is a community of experts working in the field of digital cultural heritage. The group provides advice and expertise to both Europeana and the wider Cultural Heritage Community to help expand and improve access to Europe’s digital cultural heritage. DRI engages with the ENA through participation in ENA webinars and training events, as well as the Europeana Conference.

DRI became Ireland’s aggregator to Europeana in 2019 – the Europeana Aggregators Forum (EAF) brings together Accredited Aggregators who work with cultural heritage institutions to gather authentic, trustworthy, and robust data and make it accessible through Europeana.

Find out more about DRI’s collaborations with Europeana.

The International Council on Archives (ICA) is dedicated to the effective management of records and the preservation, care and use of the world’s archival heritage through its representation of records and archive professionals across the globe.

There are approximately 1400 members in 198 countries and territories and ICA partners include UNESCO, the Council of Europe and Blue Shield International.

DRI is a member of the ICA, as well as a member of the following ICA sections: Section for Local, Municipal and Territorial Archives, Section on University and Research Institution Archives, ICA European Regional Branch. (EURBICA).

The Intersections, Feminism, Technology & Digital Humanities (IFTe) network, which is funded by the UK-Ireland Collaboration in DH Networking Call, addresses a critical challenge in contemporary society and culture: gender imbalance in computational practices and systems.

The DRI Director serves on the Advisory Board and DRI staff have contributed as part of the Events Steering Committee to the organisation of a four-part workshop series focused on intersectional approaches to the practice and reading of archives, which took place in early 2021.

The Irish Museums Association (IMA) is an all-island network for the Irish museum community. They promote and support the museum sector through activities that highlight the value of museum collections and the contribution of museums to society as places of learning, conservation, research, and interpretation.

DRI joined the IMA network in 2022 to support the growing number of museums amongst our members.

A DRI representative was appointed to the LIR Committee in 2021. LIR’s mission is to keep librarians, academic librarians in particular, informed about technologies that affect their practice.

LIR accomplishes this by producing expert seminars and training events at intervals throughout the calendar year. DRI works with members from Irish academic libraries and research performing organisations to organise seminars, workshops, and other events which bring this community of practice together.

The National Open Research Forum (NORF) was established in 2017 to drive the Irish agenda for open research.

NORF prepared Ireland’s National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment, launched by the Government of Ireland in July 2019. The role of NORF is to propose national actions to address the challenges of changing the Irish research system to strengthen, promote or better support open research practices as outlined in the National Framework. NORF is currently developing a National Action Plan for the transition to an open research environment.

As of 2022, DRI is the coordinating organisation for the National Open Research Forum, employing the National Open Research Coordinator, and managing the NORF Open Research Fund and granting process. DRI has a long history of supporting NORF and related initiatives. For example, DRI contributed to the National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment and was part of the prior National Open Access Steering Group.

The National Open Research Coordinator, Dr Daniel Bangert, is based at DRI and works with NORF on the development and delivery of a National Action Plan for the implementation of Open Research across Ireland.

DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower is a member of the Core Oversight Group of the Steering Forum.

DRI Software Engineer Dr Kathryn Cassidy is part of the NORF Infrastructure Working Group and former staff member Timea Biro co-chaired the FAIR data Working Group.

Find out more about DRI’s collaborations with NORF.

The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) became a member of the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWC) in 2021. The NWC is the leading national organisation for women and women’s groups in Ireland. DRI is one of the member organisations that contributes to the agenda of achieving equality for all women and girls in Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Museums Council is the lead body supporting local museums across Northern Ireland. They fulfil a leading and enabling role for the local museum sector through their activities and by supporting, empowering, and collaborating with others to ensure the positive role of museums in society.

The DRI joined the NIMC in 2022 to support the growing number of museums amongst our members.

The OECD Global Science Forum works in the area of international scientific cooperation, providing a venue for consultations among senior science policy officials of OECD member countries. DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower was appointed to the OECD Global Science Forum Expert Group on Sustainable Business Models for Data Repositories (2016-17).

In December 2017, the Expert group launched its report on Business Models for Sustainable Research Data Repositories, available on the OECD iLibrary: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/302b12bb-en DRI continues to contribue to OECD events.

Find out more about DRI’s collaborations with OECD.

Samvera is a vibrant and welcoming community of information and technology professionals who share challenges, build expertise, and create sustainable, best-in-class solutions, making the world’s digital collections accessible now and into the future.

Samvera’s suite of repository software tools offers flexible and rich user interfaces tailored to distinct content types on top of a robust back end. Through underpinning community collaboration and support, the tools can enable a wide range of repository solutions.

DRI has been a Samvera Partner since 2016, working closely with other partners to share best practice and to contribute to the community, which helps ensure Samvera’s longevity, support, and commitment to managed evolution.

World Data System (WDS) represents a worldwide ‘community of excellence’ for scientific data that ensures the long-term stewardship and provision of quality-assured data and data services to the international science community.

DRI is a member of the WDS Network.