The University of Rochester Libraries' IR+ institutional repository software has been overviewed in a recent Inside Higher Ed article ("Encouraging Open Access") and a University of Rochester press release.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Created by a team at the University's River Campus Libraries, UR Research (https://urresearch.rochester.edu/home.action) is a one-stop Web site for managing the academic workflow. The suite of online tools meets an array of research needs, from authoring manuscripts to showcasing work to storing digital materials securely and when needed, permanently.

The system is designed to give researchers the incentive they need to upload their work to Web-based archives. "It's a win-win relationship," explains Suzanne Bell, the librarian charged with introducing the system to the University community. "Researchers get the tailor-made functions and online storage they need, Internet users get free and open access to academic research and priceless collections." For libraries, the program was designed as open-source software available for download to other institutions at no cost.

"It's a cyber work space that's collaborative," says Natalie Klein, a doctoral candidate in brain and cognitive sciences who quickly became enamored with the site after its recent launch. Klein particularly likes the ability to create and share documents in virtually any format. As a psycholinguist, her research data is quantitative and requires specialized text formatting, coding that is typically stripped when using popular online text sharing programs like Google Documents.

Klein also loves the user control built into the program, allowing her to create a customized researcher page and to easily post and update her CV and research. "I can upload documents myself instead of harassing a Web developer," she points out. "And the support has been great. I can't get that with Google Documents or even my department's Web site."

Doug Guiffrida, associate professor of counseling and human development in the Warner School of Education, agrees. The library's support team has always been "fantastic," he says. "They have made using this super easy."

Guiffrida uses the online archiving system to keep his work organized in one place and available for search engines and the public, who are free to download documents from the system. (Users also may have private work areas that cannot be searched or viewed by the public.) When a colleague asks for a paper, Guiffrida emails the UR Research link; when he gives a presentation, he posts the PowerPoint file on the system and shares the URL, a more earth friendly practice than printing out stacks of handouts, he points out. Even in his own office, Guiffrida says, "I actually use it instead of keeping hard copies around, if I need to look at something that I've written. I'm kind of a minimalist." And, unlike most departmental Web sites, the system tracks how often files are downloaded. "It's nice to see what people are reading and what they are ignoring," says Guiffrida.

An early adopter of UR Research, Guiffrida first began using the system when it was originally introduced in 2003 as simply a digital repository, a place for scholars to preserve and make available online preprints, dissertations, working papers, photographs, research data, music scores, and other work. But five years after its launch, only 6,500 documents had been entered into UR Research, says Nathan Sarr, the library's senior software engineer who designed the expanded system.

So the development team went back to the drawing board to find out what was wrong. Under the leadership of Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost and Andrew H. and Janet Dayton Neilly Dean of River Campus Libraries; David Lindahl, software development director; and Nancy Fried Foster, director of anthropological research, they conducted an anthropological study of faculty members and a second study of graduate students. What they discovered was that researchers needed software for working collaboratively with their colleagues, whether down the hall or across the globe. They needed online tools for sharing different versions of manuscripts in a safe and secure environment. And they needed a place to showcase their research. Graduate students, in particular, needed safe storage for their theses and the ever growing mounds of digital data from research. And all researchers, juggling demanding schedules, needed a system that saved time and was easy to use.

"We saw there was a disconnect between the repository and faculty needs," says Gibbons. "Then we set out to build a system that addressed all of the misalignments we found. Every significant feature of this system can be traced back to a finding of our faculty and/or grad student research."

"What's novel about this system is that it has been built around user needs," adds Mike Bell, assistant dean for information technology. "Most other repositories have been focused on systems architecture and public access, not on what is most important to contributors."

Presentations from the recent Repositories and the Cloud meeting, which was sponsored by Eduserv and JISC, and are now available.

Presentations included "Cloud-Based Projects at Belfast e-Science Centre," "Cloud Services for Repositories", "DuraCloud—Open Technologies and Services for Managing Durable Data in the Cloud," and "EPrints and the Cloud."

Read more about it at "Slides and Observations from “Repositories in the Cloud” London."

JISC has released the Digital Repository infoKit, which was created in association with the Repository Support Project.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Digital Repository infoKit is a practical 'how to' guide to setting up and running digital repositories. The kit contains information on a broad range of topics running from the initial idea of a digital repository and the planning process, via detailed sections on repository set up and promotion, through to the maintenance and ongoing management of the repository. The main focus is on institutional repositories and the kit reflects current repository community best practice. This resource has been written for repository administrators. It assumes no prior knowledge of repository matters and, more importantly, assumes no prior technical knowledge. The kit can be used by anyone who needs an introduction to any of the topics covered.

Eric Jansson has self-archived "DSpace Manakin UI: Case Study of Value and Costs" in the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education's repository.

Here's an excerpt from:

Our experience in this project pointed towards three main ideas:

• Many smaller institutions are staffed sufficiently to use the Manakin technology for branding and interface tweaking, as they can leverage web development skills, providing that system administration support for maintaining a development DSpace is available.
• Development of advanced Manakin themes (defined as development that significantly alters, removes, or rearranges interface components, or that integrates new functionality into the interfaces) is comparable to web-application development in terms of complexity. As such, more advanced development is only likely to succeed for institutions whose staffing includes a dedicated expert in web application development, and one who is familiar with XML technologies (i.e. XML, XPath, XSL), and possibly AJAX, and Javascript.
• Smaller institutions with more advanced goals should consider working together and using outside expertise in theme development. Outside expertise could be supplied through partnering with other institutions pursuing Manakin development projects or through vendors.

Read more about it at "Using Manakin to Expand the Capabilities of DSpace Repositories."

Researcher pages in Hong Kong University's institutional repository will be updated with citation data generated by Elsevier's Scopus API.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Scopus API offers users the opportunity to creatively interact with Scopus data by building mashups. It also allows access and usage of Scopus data inside and outside of the traditional library domain through applications based on the API. The API returns Scopus data in a format that easily integrates into an application or a web site. The majority of Scopus data is already available through the API, which can currently be used to request very specific information about article references, citations and affiliations.

HKU is the first institution to show Scopus h-index, and counts of citations, documents, and co-authors for each current HKU author across the institution, in its local institutional repository, The HKU Scholars Hub (The Hub). These details are shown on The Hub ResearcherPages, an expert profiling system which showcases the research of each current HKU author. HKU uses the Scopus API to build these pages, and update them in real time.

The Scopus search API draws on live data from Scopus, the world's largest abstract and citation database. By using the API, HKU is able to populate The Hub with real-time Scopus information, increasing accuracy and enriching data with valuable citation information. The API also enables HKU to highlight its overall performance and automate the process of keeping faculty publication lists up to date through continuous electronic tracking of individual researcher output. Research metrics cumulated by paper, and by author, are brought seamlessly into The Hub and displayed on appropriate records. This flexibility is a result of a recent enhancement to the Scopus API which allows for easier and more scalable ways of implementing citation counts to instantly enrich the content available on a given platform. . . .

HKU plans to further enhance ResearcherPages to display other output and citation details and expects there will be new opportunities to leverage the results in key activities such as the grant application process. HKU is also using the additional bibliometric data from Scopus and others to prepare for an impending Research Assessment Exercise.

Stuart Lewis has released EasyDeposit, a toolkit for creating SWORD deposit interfaces.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

EasyDeposit allows you to create customised SWORD deposit interfaces by configuring a set of 'steps'. A typical flow of steps may be: login, select a repository, enter some metadata, upload a file, verify the information is correct, perform the deposit, send a confirmation email. Alternatively a deposit flow may just require a file to be uploaded and a title entered. A configuration file is used to list the steps you require.

EasyDeposit makes use of the CodeIgniter MVC PHP framework. This means each 'step' is made up of two files: a 'controller' which looks after the validation and processing of any data entered, and a 'view' which controls the web page that a user sees. This separation of concerns makes it easy for web programmers to edit the controllers, and web designers to tinker with the look and feel of the interface in the views.

The Publishing and the Ecology of European Research (PEER) project has released PEER Behavioural Research: Authors and Users vis-à-vis Journals and Repositories; Baseline Report.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The PEER Behavioural Research Team from Loughborough University (Department of Information Science & LISU) has completed its behavioural baseline report, which is based on an electronic survey of authors (and authors as users) with more than 3000 European researchers and a series of focus groups covering the Medical sciences; Social sciences, humanities & arts; Life sciences; and Physical sciences & mathematics. The objectives of the Behavioural Research within PEER are to:

• Track trends and explain patterns of author and user behaviour in the context of so called Green Open Access.
• Understand the role repositories play for authors in the context of journal publishing.
• Understand the role repositories play for users in context of accessing journal articles.

The baseline report outlines findings from the first phase of the research and identifies the key themes to emerge. It also identifies priorities for further analysis and future work. Some interesting points to emerge from the first phase of research that may be of interest to a number of stakeholders in the scholarly communication system include:

• An individual's attitude towards open access repositories may change dependant on whether they are an author or a reader; readers being interested in the quality of the articles but authors also focused on the reputation of the repository itself
• Reaching the target audience is the overwhelming motivation for scholars to disseminate their research results and this strongly influences their choice of journal and/or repository
• Researchers in certain disciplines may lack confidence in making preprints available, and to some extent this is not only a matter of confidence in the quality of a text but also due to differences in work organisation across research cultures (e.g. strong internal peer review of manuscripts versus reliance on journals for peer review). Other factors are likely to include career stage and centrality of research to the parent discipline
• Value-added services, such as download statistics and alert services, would contribute to the perceived usefulness of repositories and could help them gain popularity in what is an increasingly competitive information landscape
• Readers often need to go through a variety of processes to access all the articles that they require and widespread open access may reduce the need for this time consuming practice.

OCLC has made basic and advanced OAIster search interfaces available. Access is free.

OAIster is a database of over 23 million records from OAI-PMH-compliant digital repositories, which was originally developed by the University of Michigan Library. Initially, OCLC made OAIster available only as part of WorldCat and as a FirstSearch database (these access points remain). (Thanks to ResourceShelf.)

Read more about it at "OCLC Makes OAIster Records Available through WorldCat.org," "OCLC makes OAIster Records Available through WorldCat.org to Ensure Long-Term Public Access to Digital Resources," and "University of Michigan and OCLC Form Partnership to Ensure Long-Term Access to OAIster Database."

The Cybermetrics Lab of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientóficas has released The Ranking Web of World Repositories (January 2010 edition).

Here's an excerpt:

As in previous edition we provide two global Rankings. One that covers all repositories (Top400) and another that focuses only on Institutional Repositories (Top 400 Institutional). We are considering to include in future editions portals of journals and papers (super repositories).

The composite index (World Ranking) is computed combining normalized values instead of ranks. The visibility is calculated giving extra importance to the external inlinks not coming from generic domains (.com, .org, .net). The figures for rich files (pdf, doc, ppt, ps, and new for this edition, xls) are combined and not treated individually.

Read more about it at "Ranking Web of World Repositories ."

Presentations from the DRF International Conference 2009: Open Access Repositories Now and in the Future—From the Global and Asia-Pacific Points of View are now available. The Digital Repository Federation is "a federation consisting of 87 universities and research institutes (as of February 2009), which aims to promote Open Access and Institutional Repository in Japan."

Here's a quick selection of presentations:

• Before and after DRF Initiative: A Cluster of Institutional Repository Programs beyond the Traditional Role of the Library, Hideki Uchijima (Kanazawa University)
• Future Perspectives of Institutional Repositories in Taiwan, Simon C. Lin, Ya-Ning Chen (Academia Sinica)
• Innovation in Scholarly Communication in High-Energy Physics:Repositories and Open Access, Salvatore Mele (CERN)
• Suggestions for Asian/Australasian Regional Cooperation based on a Critical Evaluation of Collaboration and Standardisation across Australian Institutional Repositories, Peter Sefton (University of Southern Queensland)
• A Retrospective of NII Projects on New Perspectives in CSI, Jun Adachi (National Institute of Informatics)

JISC has released JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme: Final Evaluation Report.

Here's an excerpt:

This report provides an evaluation of the JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme (RPP) as it reached its conclusion. The Repositories and Preservation Programme was a £14m investment in Higher Education repository and digital content infrastructure running between April 2006 and March 2009. The programme funded a wide range of initiatives to support the development of digital repositories and related activities. The programme was established in order to achieve a number of benefits for the JISC community and related stakeholders.

The aim of this report is to draw together various data sources and provide a high level evaluation of the JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme. The Repositories and Preservation Programme team has taken a benefit led approach to the evaluation of the programme based around the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) methodology. Twenty one benefits were identified and developed to reflect what the programme sought to achieve. The purpose of the final evaluation was to ascertain whether the benefits had been achieved or are likely to be achieved due to the work of the programme. Data for the evaluation was drawn from a variety of sources.

The PIRUS 2 project has been launched.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

PIRUS 2, supported by JISC, the United Kingdom Joint Information Systems Committee, is a co-operative project involving repositories and publishers, which will develop a set of standards, protocols and processes to enable publishers, repositories and other organizations to generate and share authoritative, trustworthy usage statistics for the individual articles and other items that they host.

PIRUS 2 builds on the standards already established by COUNTER and on the results of the original PIRUS (Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics) project, which demonstrated that it is technically feasible to create record and consolidate usage statistics for individual articles using data from repositories and publishers, despite the diversity of organizational and technical environments in which they operate.

Until now the most granular level at which COUNTER requires reporting of usage is at the individual journal level. A number of recent developments have, however, means that it would now be appropriate to give a higher priority to developing a COUNTER standard for the recording, reporting and consolidation of usage statistics at the individual article level.

PIRUS 2 will seek to meet the following main objectives:

• Develop a suite of free, open source programmes to support the generation and sharing of COUNTER compliant usage data and statistics that can be extended to cover any and all individual items in institutional and subject repositories
• Develop a prototype article level Publisher/Repository usage statistics service Define a core set of standard usage statistics reports that repositories could/should produce for internal and external consumption
• Assess the costs for repositories and publishers of generating the required usage reports, as well as the costs of any central clearing house/houses; investigate how these costs could be allocated between stakeholders