Set up as part of the Initiatives of Excellence, ISTEX will offer an unrivalled corpus of electronic scientific resources and a national platform enabling every researcher to make the most of them. This ambitious project involves Lorraine University.

As early as 2015 researchers in France will have an "exceptional" database and innovative services "to suit their needs", thanks to ISTEX, an Initiative of Excellence financed as part of Future Investments. ISTEX's ambition is "to create an online library of scientific archives to the highest international standards common to every university and laboratory in order to guarantee equality of access." The aid agreement provides a €60m envelope over three years. The agreement was signed on 19 April 2012, marking the official launch of this project led by the CNRS. Three other operators will take part in its implementation : Couperin (Consortium universitaire de publications numériques, or University Consortium for digital publications), ABES (Agence bibliographique de l’enseignement supérieur, or Higher Education Bibliographic Agency) and Lorraine University.

The first plank of ISTEX consists of an acquisitions programme unprecedented in France (€55m). It consists of archiving 50 to 60 million electronic resources in every domain : articles, theses, books, back numbers of periodicals, etc. "Several studies have shown that a rich documentary platform enhances the productivity and quality of research, as well as the innovation shown in patents," the partners said. Some "pump-priming" purchases last year have made it possible to establish a standard licence, test run procedures and to prove "the relevance of a centralised initiative as a factor creating substantial economies."

The second plank is that of developing a digital platform (€5m). This will bring onto just one interface a mass of knowledge at present hosted by multiple publishers. The tool will also integrate value added services to exploit this heritage to the full: data mining, data extraction and representation, annotation, production of summaries or terminological corpuses, etc. Built on an open architecture, "ISTEX will, in this way, enable establishments to enrich their own portals at the same time as facilitating transdisciplinary work".

  © Picture : DiMmEr - Fotolia.com

• Return to the file : "Future Investments in Lorraine : summary"