OpenScout

OpenScout invites repository providers which offer open educational resources (OER) around business and management education to become partners of OpenScout and thus to take advantage of valuable benefits offered through OpenScout. Download the details here.

What does OpenScout develeop?

OpenScout (www.openscout.net) is a European project which creates an educational service for business and management education across Europe and beyond. OpenScout provides a Web-based access point and search interface for open management related content (http://www.openscout.net/demo) and aims at creating a large community of educators and learners from the management domain. The project brings together open contents from different repositories, and provides value-added tools and services for learners, educators and technology providers. The OpenScout community is consisting of both Academics and Companies. By connecting to the OpenScout community repository providers can increase their visibility and can address potential target groups directly.

How is an external repository connected to OpenScout?

The integration of distributed repositories into a federated OpenScout repository is done by harvesting metadata through an OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) Target of the external repository. This means that OpenScout users will be able to search and find material from external repositories within the OpenScout metadata federation, but the material itself remains in the external repository. To open it users are automatically directed from OpenScout to the external repository. If your repository already offers an OAI-PMH target, the connection requires only little effort. In case you do not yet provide an OAI-PMH target OpenScout will give you technical support to set up the target. For more collaborative actions, we can discuss your needs and wishes.

What are the benefits of becoming an OpenScout partner?

OpenScout aims at entering into partnership with repository providers in order to create new access pathways to contents. The partnership can take different forms and will bring mutual benefits. OpenScout will provide its content metadata as well as share tools and services with its partners (e.g. for communication, adaptation and content packaging). As OpenScout will attract new user groups in the field of business and management, this mutual sharing and partnership will create additional traffic on the OpenScout partner side and will increase the distribution of your contents significantly.

By joining OpenScout you contribute to the productive future of the open sharing of educational resources. Furthermore you will not only gain visibility, international recognition and exposure but also user enhanced metadata (e.g. competence information according to the OpenScout Competence Taxonomy, context specific metadata targeted at enhancing reuse and many more) and access to OpenScout services and tools.

You can find more detailed information including different partnership models in the document “OpenScout Partnership Program: Guide for Repository Providers” that you can download here.

Contact Us

If you are interested in a partnership with OpenScout, please indicate a contact person for further discussion and negotiation and send it to us. If you have any questions or need further clarification, please contact us: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .