Category: Digital Repositories

"Are Scientific Data Repositories Coping with Research Data Publishing?"

Massimiliano Assante et al. have published "Are Scientific Data Repositories Coping with Research Data Publishing?" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This study analyses the solutions offered by generalist scientific data repositories, i.e., repositories supporting the deposition of any type of research data. These repositories cannot make any assumption on the application domain. They are actually called to face with the almost open ended typologies of data used in science. The current practices promoted by such repositories are analysed with respect to eight key aspects of data publishing, i.e., dataset formatting, documentation, licensing, publication costs, validation, availability, discovery and access, and citation. From this analysis it emerges that these repositories implement well consolidated practices and pragmatic solutions for literature repositories. These practices and solutions can not totally meet the needs of management and use of datasets resources, especially in a context where rapid technological changes continuously open new exploitation prospects.

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DuraSpace and LYRASIS Boards Approve "Intent to Merge"

The DuraSpace and LYRASIS Boards have approved an "Intent to Merge".

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The respective boards unanimously approved an "Intent to Merge", which means the organizations, having done a careful initial investigation, will move into a public phase to consider an official plan and pathway for the potential coming together, including a full analysis of member benefits. The decision to eventually come together is not yet final. In this public phase of investigation, each organization seeks feedback from members of their organizations and will investigate carefully the value of all services, projects, membership models and organizational cultures to ensure a smooth transition for members of both organizations should a merger agreement occur.

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"The Role of arXiv, RePEc, SSRN and PMC in Formal Scholarly Communication"

Xuemei Li has self-archived "The Role of arXiv, RePEc, SSRN and PMC in Formal Scholarly Communication."

Here's an excerpt:

The four major Subject Repositories (SRs), arXiv, Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and PubMed Central (PMC), are all important within their disciplines but no previous study has systematically compared how often they are cited in academic publications. In response, this article reports an analysis of citations to SRs from Scopus publications, 2000 to 2013.

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"PLOS Recommended Data Repositories"

Daniella Lowenberg has published "PLOS Recommended Data Repositories" in EveryOne.

Here's an excerpt:

In line with our updated Data Policy, we are pleased to announce a PLOS Data Repository Recommendation Guide.

To support the selection of data repositories for authors, PLOS has identified a set of established repositories, which are recognized and trusted within their respective communities. To develop the list, we consulted with editors, organizations running data repositories, and other publishers in order to cover the breadth of disciplines and subject areas published by PLOS.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

DSpace@MIT Tops 3 Million Downloads

MIT's DSpace@MIT repository has had over 3 million downloads as of the end of April.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Open Access Articles Collection in DSpace@MIT now contains over 16,600 articles, which collectively were downloaded over 90,000 times in April.

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"Development of a Scale for Measuring Perceptions of Trustworthiness for Digitized Archival Documents"

Devan Rays Donaldson has self-archived "Development of a Scale for Measuring Perceptions of Trustworthiness for Digitized Archival Documents."

Here's an excerpt:

This dissertation advances scholarship on trustworthiness in three ways. First, it revises an existing conceptual model for trustworthiness perception. Second, it creates an original measurement model for digitized archival document trustworthiness perception-the Digitized Archival Document Trustworthiness Scale (DADTS). Third, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the concept of trustworthiness by providing measurement of the concept in a way that is sensitive to its nuances.

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"Global Scholarship: The Role of Subject Repositories in Advancing Research from the Developing World"

Julia Kelly and Linda Eells have published "Global Scholarship: The Role of Subject Repositories in Advancing Research from the Developing World" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

While subject repositories successfully fill a scholarly communication niche in particular disciplines, they have not been recognized for the important role they play in promoting global scholarship. Repositories such as AgEcon Search make valuable and unique contributions by increasing publishing options for researchers and thus exposing and distributing research produced in the developing world.

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IMLS Releases Four National Digital Platform Grant Proposals

IMLS has released four national digital platform grant proposals for projects it awarded grants to.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

  • Fostering a New National Library Network through a Community-­Based, Connected Repository System (LG-70-15-0006): The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Stanford University, and DuraSpace will foster a greatly expanded network of open-access, content-hosting "hubs" that will enable discovery and interoperability, as well as the reuse of digital resources by people from this country and around the world. The three partners will engage in a major development of the community-driven open source Hydra project to provide these hubs with a new all-in-one solution, which will also allow countless other institutions to easily join the national digital platform.
  • Museum Hub for Open Content (LG-70-15-0002): ARTstor, in collaboration with the El Paso Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Staten Island Museum, and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will create and implement software to enable museums to contribute digital image collections for open public access. The project will lower barriers to museum contributions to the DPLA by producing enhanced metadata tools, intellectual property rights decision support tools, and a direct-to-DPLA publishing capacity.
  • Combining Social Media Storytelling with Web Archives (LG-71-15-0077): Old Dominion University and the Internet Archive will collaborate to develop tools and techniques for integrating "storytelling" social media and web archiving. The partners will use information retrieval techniques to (semi-)automatically generate stories summarizing a collection and mine existing public stories as a basis for librarians, archivists, and curators to create collections about breaking events.
  • Repository Services for Accessible Course Content (LG-72-15-0009): This planning project, led by Tufts University, will bring together experts from disability services, including librarians, IT professionals, advocates, and legal counsel, to develop work plans for shared infrastructure, within which universities can support their students with disabilities. The intention is to create specifications and a business model that will complement existing platforms and services.

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"5 Million Public Domain Ebooks in HathiTrust: What Does This Mean?"

Rick Anderson has published "5 Million Public Domain Ebooks in HathiTrust: What Does This Mean?" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

A week or so ago, a monumental thing happened: the number of public-domain books in the HathiTrust digital repository topped 5 million. And since no one (including HathiTrust, so far) seems to be making a very big deal about this, it seems like a good moment both to recap the achievements of HathiTrust and to consider a few of its implications for the future of reading and scholarship.

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"Availability and Accessibility in an Open Access Institutional Repository: A Case Study"

Jongwook Lee et al. have published "Availability and Accessibility in an Open Access Institutional Repository: A Case Study" in Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

This study explores the extent to which an institutional repository makes papers available and accessible on the open Web by using 170 journal articles housed in DigiNole Commons, the institutional repository at Florida State University. . . .

Overall, the results confirm the contribution of the institutional repository in making papers available and accessible. The results also reveal some impediments to the success of open access, including impediments linked to contractual arrangements between authors and publishers, impediments linked to policies, practices and technologies governing the repository itself, and the low level of faculty participation in the repository.

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"ADS: The Next Generation Search Platform"

Alberto Accomazzi et al. have self-archived "ADS: The Next Generation Search Platform."

Here's an excerpt:

Starting in 2011, the ADS started to systematically collect, parse and index full-text documents for all the major publications in Physics and Astronomy as well as many smaller Astronomy journals and arXiv e-prints, for a total of over 3.5 million papers. Our citation coverage has doubled since 2010 and now consists of over 70 million citations. We are normalizing the affiliation information in our records and, in collaboration with the CfA library and NASA, we have started collecting and linking funding sources with papers in our system. . . . We have rolled out and are now enhancing a new high-performance search engine capable of performing full-text as well as metadata searches using an intuitive query language which supports fielded, unfielded and functional searches. We are currently able to index acknowledgments, affiliations, citations, funding sources, and to the extent that these metadata are available to us they are now searchable under our new platform. The ADS private library system is being enhanced to support reading groups, collaborative editing of lists of papers, tagging, and a variety of privacy settings when managing one's paper collection.

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"What Factors Influence Where Researchers Deposit their Data? A Survey of Researchers Submitting to Data Repositories"

Shea Swauger and Todd J. Vision have published "What Factors Influence Where Researchers Deposit their Data? A Survey of Researchers Submitting to Data Repositories" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

In order to better understand the factors that most influence where researchers deposit their data when they have a choice, we collected survey data from researchers who deposited phylogenetic data in either the TreeBASE or Dryad data repositories. Respondents were asked to rank the relative importance of eight possible factors. We found that factors differed in importance for both TreeBASE and Dryad, and that the rankings differed subtly but significantly between TreeBASE and Dryad users. On average, TreeBASE users ranked the domain specialization of the repository highest, while Dryad users ranked as equal highest their trust in the persistence of the repository and the ease of its data submission process. Interestingly, respondents (particularly Dryad users) were strongly divided as to whether being directed to choose a particular repository by a journal policy or funding agency was among the most or least important factors. Some users reported depositing their data in multiple repositories and archiving their data voluntarily.

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COAR Roadmap: Future Directions for Repository Interoperability

COAR has released COAR Roadmap: Future Directions for Repository Interoperability.

Here's an excerpt:

Scholarly communication is undergoing fundamental changes, in particular with new requirements for open access to research outputs, new forms of peer-review, and alternative methods for measuring impact. In parallel, technical developments, especially in communication and interface technologies facilitate bi-directional data exchange across related applications and systems. The aim of this roadmap is to identify important trends and their associated action points in order for the repository community to determine priorities for further investments in interoperability.

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DSpace 5 Released

DuraSpace has released DSpace 5.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

With a new, modern look and feel for every device, the ability to auto-upgrade from older versions of DSpace, to batch import content and more, the release of DSpace 5 offers its far-flung global community of developers and stakeholders an even easier-to-use and more efficient institutional repository solution.

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Debra Hanken Kurtz Named as DuraSpace CEO

Debra Hanken Kurtz has been named as DuraSpace's CEO.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

It brings us great pleasure to announce that the DuraSpace Board of Directors has chosen Debra Hanken Kurtz to serve as the new CEO for the Organization. Kurtz is currently the Executive Director of the Texas Digital Library. She will begin in her new role on February 16, 2015 and establish an office in Austin, Texas to manage DuraSpace business operations.

Kurtz brings key relevant experience and skills to DuraSpace. As Executive Director of the Texas Digital Library, she managed and grew membership, operations, and services. She participates in working and planning groups for DPN and SHARE. At both Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill Libraries, Kurtz provided leadership and direction for digital collections, public websites, and early planning efforts for both libraries' institutional repositories. She was an active partner within the Triangle Research Libraries Network and has been a voice for Kuali OLE, an open-source integrated library system built by and for academic and research libraries. Kurtz's complete background can be found on linkedin.

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"Science 2.0 Repositories: Time for a Change in Scholarly Communication"

Massimiliano Assante, et al. have published "Science 2.0 Repositories: Time for a Change in Scholarly Communication" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Information and communication technology (ICT) advances in research infrastructures are continuously changing the way research and scientific communication are performed. Scientists, funders, and organizations are moving the paradigm of "research publishing" well beyond traditional articles. The aim is to pursue an holistic approach where publishing includes any product (e.g. publications, datasets, experiments, software, web sites, blogs) resulting from a research activity and relevant to the interpretation, evaluation, and reuse of the activity or part of it. The implementation of this vision is today mainly inspired by literature scientific communication workflows, which separate the "where" research is conducted from the "where" research is published and shared. In this paper we claim that this model cannot fit well with scientific communication practice envisaged in Science 2.0 settings. We present the idea of Science 2.0 Repositories (SciRepos), which meet publishing requirements arising in Science 2.0 by blurring the distinction between research life-cycle and research publishing. SciRepos interface with the ICT services of research infrastructures to intercept and publish research products while providing researchers with social networking tools for discovery, notification, sharing, discussion, and assessment of research products.

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Fedora 4 Production Release

The international Fedora repository community and DuraSpace have released the Fedora 4 production release.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This significant release signals the effectiveness of an international and complex community source project in delivering a modern repository platform with features that meet or exceed current use cases in the management of institutional digital assets. Fedora 4 features include vast improvements in scalability, linked data capabilities, research data support, modularity, ease of use and more.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Focusing on Student Research In The Institutional Repository DigitalCommons@USU"

Danielle Barandiaran et al. have published "Focusing on Student Research In The Institutional Repository DigitalCommons@USU" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Student research is a significant and rapidly growing component of the institutional repository (IR) at Utah State University (USU). A briefing paper prepared for Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) points to student works as one of nine purposes for an IR.1 It is not uncommon to find undergraduate and graduate theses and dissertations in IRs. In 2013, an analysis of 283 U.S. repositories using the bepress or DSpsace platforms indicated 71% include this type of student research. However, other student research such as posters, presentations, or papers were only found in 38% of these repositories. Utah State University's IR actively solicits student research resulting from research groups and individuals, as well as posters and creative works featured in the university's Student Showcase symposium.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Development of Open Access Repositories in the Asia-Oceania Region: A Case Study of Three Institutions"

IFLA has released "The Development of Open Access Repositories in the Asia-Oceania Region: A Case Study of Three Institutions."

Here's an excerpt:

In recent years, open access models of publishing have transcended traditional modes thus enabling freer access to research. This paper takes a trans-regional approach to examining open access publishing in the Asia and Oceania region focusing on three institutions—Charles Darwin University in Australia, University of Hong Kong, and University of Malaya in Malaysia—reflecting on how each is rising, in its own individual way, to meet the range of challenges that its research communities are facing. Specifically, it focuses on open access and institutional repository development, and traces their development at each of the aforementioned institutions.

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"A Current Snapshot of Institutional Repositories: Growth Rate, Disciplinary Content and Faculty Contributions"

Ellen Dubinsky has published "A Current Snapshot of Institutional Repositories: Growth Rate, Disciplinary Content and Faculty Contributions" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

Mean and median growth rates of IRs have increased since measured in 2007, with variance depending upon size and type of academic institution and age of the IR. Disciplinary content in IRs is unevenly distributed, with the Sciences predominantly represented. IR administrators remain actively involved in the submission process and in the promotion of their IRs. Personal contact with individuals or groups of faculty is the most used and successful interaction method.

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"Degrees of Openness: Access Restrictions in Institutional Repositories"

Hélène Prostand Joachim Schöpfel have published "Degrees of Openness: Access Restrictions in Institutional Repositories" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Institutional repositories, green road and backbone of the open access movement, contain a growing number of items that are metadata without full text, metadata with full text only for authorized users, and items that are under embargo or that are restricted to on-campus access. This paper provides a short overview of relevant literature and presents empirical results from a survey of 25 institutional repositories that contain more than 2 million items. The intention is to evaluate their degree of openness with specific attention to different categories of documents (journal articles, books and book chapters, conference communications, electronic theses and dissertations, reports, working papers) and thus to contribute to a better understanding of their features and dynamics. We address the underlying question of whether this lack of openness is temporary due to the transition from traditional scientific communication to open access infrastructures and services, or here to stay, as a basic feature of the new and complex cohabitation of institutional repositories and commercial publishing.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Cultivating Scholarship: The Role of Institutional Repositories in Health Sciences Libraries" Lisa A. Palmer

Lisa A. Palmer has self-archived "Cultivating Scholarship: The Role of Institutional Repositories in Health Sciences Libraries."

Here's an excerpt:

The early promise of institutional repositories is beginning to bear fruit. Medical libraries with institutional repositories, like other academic libraries, have found that their repositories support new ways of engaging with researchers and meeting the challenges posed by the transformation in scholarly communication over the past decade exemplified by open access, the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy, campus-based publishing, and the sharing of research data. Institutional repositories can grow and thrive in academic health sciences libraries and be a vital component in the provision of library services to faculty, researchers, staff, and students.

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Preservation Health Check: Monitoring Threats to Digital Repository Content

OCLC Research has released Preservation Health Check: Monitoring Threats to Digital Repository Content.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Preservation Health Check: Monitoring Threats to Digital Repository Content presents the preliminary findings of Phase 1 of our Preservation Health Check investigation of preservation monitoring and suggests that there is an opportunity to use PREMIS preservation metadata as an evidence base to support a threat assessment exercise based on the Simple Property-Oriented Threat (SPOT) model.

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The Value and Impact of Data Sharing and Curation: A Synthesis of Three Recent Studies of UK Research Data Centres

JISC has released The Value and Impact of Data Sharing and Curation: A Synthesis of Three Recent Studies of UK Research Data Centres.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The data centre studies combined quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to quantify value in economic terms and present other, non-economic, impacts and benefits. Uniquely, the studies cover both users and depositors of data, and we believe the surveys of depositors undertaken are the first of their kind. All three studies show a similar pattern of findings, with data sharing via the data centres having a large measurable impact on research efficiency and on return on investment in the data and services. These findings are important for funders, both for making the economic case for investment in data curation and sharing and research data infrastructure, and for ensuring the sustainability of such research data centres.

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DuraSpace Launches DSpaceDirect

DuraSpace has launched DSpaceDirect.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today the DuraSpace organization is pleased to announce the public launch of DSpaceDirect—the only hosted repository solution for low-cost discovery, access, archiving, and preservation. DSpaceDirect is now available with convenient features that include fast start-up, you-pick customization, no-cost upgrades, content preservation options, anytime data access and all-the-time data control—all at a price that puts solutions for long-term access to digital scholarly assets within reach of institutions of any size. . . .

Built on DSpace, the most widely-used repository application in the world with more than 1,500 installed instances, DSpaceDirect was inspired by the idea that the past creates the future as each generation builds knowledge on the scholarship that came before. DSpaceDirect is a hosted DSpace repository service that allows institutions of any size to afford to keep their digital content safe and accessible over time. Small institutions are able to get a repository up and running right away that can be made available to patrons as well as to new users worldwide. Users say that the DSpaceDirect easy start-up accelerates discussions about digital content stewardship and preservation best practices at their institutions.

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