About eSciDoc

eSciDoc is as a joint project of the Max Planck Society and FIZ Karlsruhe , funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), with the aim to realize a next-generation platform for communication and publication in research organizations.

The result of the entire eSciDoc project is intended to ensure open and persistent access to the research results and materials of the Max Planck Society and to integrate these materials in an emerging e-Science network, to increase the accountability of research and to improve the visibility of the Max Planck Society. At the same time, the project aims to provide effective and comprehensive access to information for Max Planck researchers and their work groups. Additionally, eSciDoc will support scientific collaboration and interdisciplinary research in future e-Science scenarios and optimize the exploitation of information available through an interconnected global scientific knowledge space.

Advances in science, scientific activities and processes will arise from unhindered international collaboration among scholars. To exempt researchers from barriers of physical location of knowledge (data) and know-how (individuals), a solid infrastructure to provide data storage, interoperability and seamless integration into community-specific working environments is necessary. The technical and technological means provided by a scientific infrastructure are fundamentals in enabling e-Science, however, the essential requirement to enable innovation and research is the adequate working environment for scholarly communities.

Even within a discipline, the requirements for a specific solution might differ, be it in presentation aspects or functionalities. Therefore, the functional requirements for the eSciDoc project are threefold: provide community-specific solutions which serve the needs of a specific research group or research question, provide standardized interfaces for other communities or systems to re-use data and functionalities and provide adequate user interfaces and viewing environments where necessary.