Commission approves EDRA project The European Commission has approved the EDRA (European DOI (digital object identifier) registration agency) project within the context of the eContent programme, involving significant representatives from the publishing community in France, Germany and Spain. Coordinated by ... The European Commission has approved the EDRA (European DOI (digital object identifier) registration agency) project within the context of the eContent programme, involving significant representatives from the publishing community in France, Germany and Spain. Coordinated by Associazione Italiana Editori (AIE, the Italian publishers association), EDRA aims to develop the first multilingual and multiple-application DOI-RA. EDRA's objective is to build up an agency or a network of agencies developing applications and targeting multilingual content production, taking into account the requirements of small and medium sized enterprises. The system will be promoted first in Italy, Germany, Spain and France but is designed to be disseminated throughout Europe. The digital object identifier (DOI) is a system for identifying and exchanging intellectual property in the digital environment. It provides a framework for managing intellectual content, for linking customers with content suppliers, for facilitating electronic commerce and enabling automated copyright management for all types of media. Using DOIs makes managing intellectual property in a networked environment much easier and more convenient, and allows the construction of automated services and transactions for e-commerce. The International DOI Foundation has endorsed the development of EDRA, and will work with the EDRA consortium in developing proposals to formally appoint the resulting initiative as one of the DOI registration agencies. Cineca (Consorzio Interuniversitario del Nord-Est italiano per il Calcolo Automatico) a technological consortium created by 15 Italian universities will provide technical support. The system implementation is planned to begin in March 2003 in order to have a fully operational agency by November 2003. EDRA will offer European content industries the necessary infrastructure, software tools and services to provide the market with the access to an identification scheme applicable to content, produced by different content industries, in different countries and in different languages.
