Participating in projects can be seen as journeys for learning about people, organizations, project management and the context of the project itself. We find working with European Union projects rewarding and ample opportunities for both personal and professional growth.

Institutional Repositories Network in Azerbaijan” project (hereafter DIRNA) aims at building capacity in the context of research output management, focusing on eight leading AZ HEIs, via establishing Open Access Institutional Repositories Network. The process of intense as well as comprehensive training, which is required to establish and then interlink the aforementioned repositories at each site, arrange the framework’s implementation, data entry and smooth management will represent the core of the DINRA. Initiator of the project is Khazar University Library & Information Center.

Learning outcomes from the project-bound activities will be shared and disseminated in a variety of ways, including the initiation and then establishment of facilities and mechanisms to proactively assist other institutions in the country in setting up and managing their own repositories. In a significant addition, the DINRA’s lenses will be on improving not only the visibility and the management of quality scholarly research, but also on supporting open access to research outputs, advocating, and fostering scholarly communication and coordination between the AZ HEIs across the country.

The proposed platform will include three main components that fill the gaps in the project: 1) a network of repositories that enables discovery, 2) flexible central repository of knowledge supporting the Azerbaijani Universities’ teaching, research, and related activities, both in the present day and for the long-term future and 3) Virtual Reference Center as a hub of reference and research activities in institutional repository data management.

The Project comprises of 8 AZ HEIs, and 3 European Higher Education Institutions (EU HEIs).

The AZ HEIs partners are as follows: Khazar University, Baku State University, Technical University, Academy of the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ganja State University,  Nakhchivan State University, Lankaran State University, Mingachevir State University.

The European partners are: University of Jyväskylä (Finland), Izmir Institute of Technology (Turkey), Università degli Studi dell’Aquila-(İtaliya).

Khazar University is the main applicant and the coordinator of the project. All other DINRA partners will participate in managing the project through looking after the activities within their segments of responsibility, while Khazar will assume the role of the main assistant-partner to facilitate all activities of the consortium. The partners will be involved in the preliminary-stage, and in the early-stage installation of pilot repositories and also in testing the repository data entrance and general management of the process.