Programmes

DEFF is Denmark’s Electronic Research Library; a now permanent programme secretariat that coordinates research and development into the entire lifecycle of electronic information from producer over library to end-user. DEFF also negotiates national licenses to digital journals on behalf of the countries’ research libraries. The programme is funded by three ministries; the Ministry Science, Technology and Innovation, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture and manages project funding from many other sources. DEFF is the Danish partner in Knowledge Exchange.

OpenAccess.se is the face of the Swedish OA programme, which is a collaboration between several participants. Among them we find the Swedish Royal Library and the Knowledge Foundation ("KK-Stiftelsen" in Swedish); a large funding agency to foster collaboration in knowledge work, whose board is appointed directly by the Swedish government. The site has news and links to projects and events. It's maintained by Nordbib programme group member Jan Hagerlid of the Swedish Royal Library.

openaccess.no is a Norwegian portal to Open Access information in a wiki-style format. It's maintained by NORA; a conglomerate of various participants from the academic and library sectors and also funded directly by the Norwegian Ministry for Education and Research. The mission of NORA is to foster development of open institutional archives as a prerequisite Open Access publishing.

JISC (Joint Information Steering Committe) in great Britain is a large programme dedicated to the development and dissemination of information and communication technology (ICT) in research and education and the British partner in Knowledge Exchange. JISC's sub-committees and working groups are involved in all aspects of ICT facilitated knowledge transfer incl. but not limited to infrastructure, content, shared environments, networks, learning and therefore Open Access as well. 

SURFfoundation is a Dutch programme for facilitating innovation in information and communication technology and its use in higher education and research. SURFfoundation is joint venture of universities, universities of applied sciences and libraries, and it participates in many international partnerships as well. SURFfoundation has a solid focus on Open Access and it is the Dutch partner in Knowledge Exchange.

Knowledge Exchange (KE) is an international collaboration between DEFF in Denmark, JISC in Great Britain, SURFfoundation in the Netherlands, and DFG in Germany. The secretariat is housed by Danish Agency for Library and Media. KE coordinates and promotes a joint approach to facilitating Open Access to scholarly and educational information and to optimal technological infrastructures in support of knowledge sharing in the research and educational sectors. Three of KE’s partner countries were the targets of the three Houghton studies, which demonstrated the huge benefits to society from Open Access publishing.