12. Open Research in Education

 The following fields of activity are prominent:

• Collaborative ways of developing and maintaining research infrastructures
• Knowledge organisation (databases, catalogues, bibliographies, classifications, indexing and abstracting, metadata, semantic and syntactic analysis [controlled vocabulary, etc.])
• Digital and virtual libraries
• Collection development and preservation (both traditional and digital)
• Public reference and other services, bibliographic/information literacy instruction, usage reports
• Scholarly communication (includes bibliometrics, informetrics, scientometrics, webometrics)
• Historical aspects of library and/or information science

Other topics of interest – becoming increasingly important in education policy – are the monitoring of the education system and evidence-based policies. Both need a solid empirical basis. In this context the following questions are important: Which data do we need for evidence-based policies in a specific area? How detailed and standardized do these data have to be? Are the existing databases (containing publications or research projects) useful in this respect? Who can provide the data we need?A further goal of the network is to facilitate access to information and documentation on education for researchers and decision makers. To achieve this, the network functions also as a forum for producers of such information (special libraries, information and documentation centres, database producers) and the users (researchers, research centres, civil servants, ministries of education, etc).