Prepared by Amanda Stevens and Lise Brin, September 2011

Knowledge for All aims to provide a single, comprehensive scholarly research tool that can be used by anyone in the world with an internet connection, computer, and web browser to search all published scholarly journal literature regardless of financial resources or institutional affiliation.  The organization also aims to provide libraries and other organizations and individuals with an open source software tool that can be customized, modified, and integrated with existing tools and systems and with open journal and journal article metadata that can be used for any purpose.  This will be accomplished through coordinating the collaborative efforts and resources of librarians, researchers, and developers around the world, who will contribute data, expertise, and time as indexers, translators, and developers. 

The Knowledge for All system will store and manage the journal and journal article data; provide a sophisticated user interface through which users can search for, use, and harvest the data; and provide a structure with which staff and volunteer contributors can develop and manage content and manage users and workflow processes.  It will be an open source tool that can be customized, modified, and further developed by the user community and will be internationalized for accessibility by users around the world.

This document identifies all currently known requirements for the Knowledge for All system.  Each feature is assigned a priority from 1-5, with 1 indicating a feature that should be developed first and 5 indicating a feature that can be developed last.  It is understood that different features may be incorporated into different versions of the software over a period of time, depending on resources available.  A realistic development schedule will be developed by the System Development Coordinator based on this document.

Open the attached PDF file below to read the full Software Requirements Specification document.