Category: Institutional Repositories

PEER Behavioural Research: Authors and Users vis-à-vis Journals and Repositories; Baseline Report

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 Makes New OAIster Interfaces Available

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 Ranking Web of World Repositories (January 2010 edition)

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 Digital Repository Federation International Conference 2009

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:

JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme: Final Evaluation Report

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.

Article-Level Repository Statistics: PIRUS 2 Project Launched

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

Research Information Systems in the Nordic Countries: Infrastructure, Concepts and Organization

Nordbib has released Research Information Systems in the Nordic Countries: Infrastructure, Concepts and Organization.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is commissioned by the Nordbib programme, and is based on a web survey of the current status of CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) and IR (Institutional Repositories) in the Nordic countries.

The survey has been conducted to investigate how Nordic higher education institutions collect and present their research output. Do they use Institutional Repositories and/or Current Research Information Systems, are these systems separate or integrated, what software is used, and how are they staffed and financed? An important part of the survey was to analyse the perceived needs for national and Nordic coordination and support regarding such specific issues as rights management, central search services, educational and promotional materials etc. The survey results are presented against international developments in Open Access, both historical and current.

Cornell University's eCommons Repository Policies

Cornell University's eCommons Policies, which were developed during the last six months by Terry Ehling, Peter Hirtle, Eileen Keating, George Kozak, Oya Rieger, John Saylor, Kizer Walker, and Simeon Warner, are now available.

The following policies are currently in place

  • Content Collection Policy
  • Deposit Policy
  • Access Policy
  • Withdrawal Policy
  • Alteration Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Preservation Support Policy

Multimedia Deposits: Complications and Considerations with Intellectual Property Rights

The Welsh Repository Network has released Multimedia Deposits: Complications and Considerations with Intellectual Property Rights .

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this learning object is to explore the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that may be within multimedia items, and to highlight some of the complications and considerations that need to be taken into account before a deposit of this type can be made into a repository.

Following two short introductions to multimedia and to copyright, questions are then posed on some of the details of copyright within varying item types. Feedback on, and an explanation to, the question's answers are given. Also included is a short exercise looking at what needs to be taken into consideration before allowing a performance video item into a repository. The learning object concludes with a look at Performers' Rights and highlights what repository staff should be aware of in regard to this IPR within potential repository deposits.

Also available as a Zip file.

Issues Surrounding Syndicated Feed Deposit into Institutional Repositories

Jorum has released Issues Surrounding Syndicated Feed Deposit into Institutional Repositories.

Here's an excerpt:

Repositories offer various ways of depositing resources. This paper examines the issues surrounding the potential offered by a syndicating feed standard such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and the ATOM protocol. The distinction is made between notification of metadata, for the purpose of registration and supply of metadata (to support search and subsequent onward linking to the object described being hosted elsewhere) and deposit of the object with metadata (to support its release for others to use).

Armbruster and Romary Compare Four Repository Types

Chris Armbruster and Laurent Romary have self-archived "Comparing Repository Types: Challenges and Barriers for Subject-Based Repositories, Research Repositories, National Repository Systems and Institutional Repositories in Serving Scholarly Communication" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

Four types of publication repository may be distinguished, namely the subject-based repository, research repository, national repository system and institutional repository.

Two important shifts in the role of repositories may be noted. With regard to content, a well-defined and high quality corpus is essential. This implies that repository services are likely to be most successful when constructed with the user and reader uppermost in mind. With regard to service, high value to specific scholarly communities is essential. This implies that repositories are likely to be most useful to scholars when they offer dedicated services supporting the production of new knowledge.

Along these lines, challenges and barriers to repository development may be identified in three key dimensions: a) identification and deposit of content; b) access and use of services; and c) preservation of content and sustainability of service. An indicative comparison of challenges and barriers in some major world regions such as Europe, North America and East Asia plus Australia is offered in conclusion.

Cornell's DigitalCommons@ILR Nears 2 Million Downloads

Cornell's DigitalCommons@ILR repository, which serves the ILR School (also known as the School of Industrial and Labor Relations), has had nearly two million downloads and contains close to 10,000 documents.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Featuring the scholarship of ILR faculty and researchers, DigitalCommons@ILR also contains workplace-related collections selected by Catherwood staff. Collection items include collective bargaining agreements, records of Congressional commissions and archives of labor and globalization-related web sites. . . .

The most downloaded items in the repository include works by ILR faculty, archived issues of the ILR Review and reports from the Congressional Research Service.

Presentations from the DSpace User Group Meeting 2009

Presentations and other materials from the DSpace User Group Meeting 2009 are now available.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Over 90 participants from 20 different countries attended the fall DSUG 2009 meeting. In addition to the European community, DSpace users from the United States, Brazil, New Zealand and Singapore were in attendance. Copies of the presentations and video recordings are now available for most of the sessions.

OAI-PMH: MOAI 1.0.7 Released

Infrae has released MOAI 1.0.7, a standalone OAI-PMH server that can “can be used in combination with any repository software that comes with an OAI feed.”

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

MOAI is a platform for aggregating content from different sources, and publishing it through the Open Archive Initiatives protocol for metadata harvesting. It's been built for academic institutional repositories dealing with relational metadata and asset files. . . .

More specifically MOAI has the ability to:

  • Harvest data from different kinds of sources
  • Serve many OAI feeds from one MOAI server, each with their own configuration
  • Turn metadata values into OAI sets on the fly, creating new collections
  • Use OAI sets to filter records shown in a feed, configurable for each feed
  • Work easily with relational data (e.g. if an author changes, the publication should also change)
  • Simple and robust authentication through integration with the Apache webserver
  • Serve assets via Apache while still using configurable authentication rules

Online Catalogue and Repository Interoperability Study (OCRIS): Final Report

JISC has released the Online Catalogue and Repository Interoperability Study (OCRIS): Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The aims and objectives of OCRIS were to:

  • Survey the extent to which repository content is in scope for institutional library OPACs, and the extent to which it is already recorded there;
  • Examine the interoperability of OPAC and repository software for the exchange of metadata and other information;
  • List the various services to institutional managers, researchers, teachers and learners offered respectively by OPACs and repositories;
  • Identify the potential for improvements in the links (e.g. using link resolver technology) from repositories and/or OPACs to other institutional services, such as finance or research administration;
  • Make recommendations for the development of possible further links between library OPACs and institutional repositories, identifying the benefits to relevant stakeholder groups.

Cloud Computing and Repositories: Fedorazon: Final Report

JISC has released Fedorazon: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The Fedorazon project is first and foremost the experiences of a small HE/FE team running and maintaining a Repository in the Cloud for one year. Being early adopters we provide both technical, fiscal and practical advice for both our successes and failures in this endeavour. We hope this report provides insight for other institutions wishing to utilise the Cloud for their Repository instance which we wholeheartedly recommend given they read this report first and prepare accordingly.

The Fedorazon project has discovered that a 'Repository in the Cloud' is easy to get up and running (both figuratively and literally); after that, all the complexity of hardware management, political costings and human resource allocation are still right where you left them. None the less we think there are significant cost savings in the Cloud that will only increase over time. We also believe that utilising the 'network effect' of the Cloud institutions can relieve the burden of having a local hardware expert to manage the repository instance. Finally, we believe that Cloud will lead to a significant change in the way we view repository architectures, especially in regards to how a 'preservation architecture' is achieved.

Final Report on the Provision of Usage Data and Manuscript Deposit Procedures for Publishers and Repository Managers

The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project has released: Final Report on the Provision of Usage Data and Manuscript Deposit Procedures for Publishers and Repository Managers.

Here's an excerpt:

This report concludes the development of an overall framework for depositing stage-two outputs in and for harvesting log files from repositories. An innovative workflow has been devised to describe and standardise the deposit from publishers to repositories that demonstrates, in a core group of interoperable European repositories, the capability of accepting material deposited from third party publishers and authors beyond the project duration.

The development of an appropriate workflow for author deposits has proved challenging, as the author response is unpredictable, and cannot readily be standardised. The guiding principle adopted is that authors are encouraged to follow their established practice of deposit in an institutional or subject-specific repository. Failing such practice, a central deposit in the PEER Depot for distribution to designated PEER repositories is recommended.

Towards Repository Preservation Services. Final Report from the JISC Preserv 2 Project

Steve Hitchcock, David Tarrant, and Les Carr have self-archived Towards Repository Preservation Services. Final Report from the JISC Preserv 2 Project in the ECS EPrints Repository.

Here's the abstract:

Preserv 2 investigated the preservation of data in digital institutional repositories, focussing in particular on managing storage, data and file formats. Preserv 2 developed the first repository storage controller, which will be a feature of EPrints version 3.2 software (due 2009). Plugin applications that use the controller have been written for Amazon S3 and Sun cloud services among others, as well as for local disk storage. In a breakthrough application Preserv 2 used OAI-ORE to show how data can be moved between two repository softwares with quite distinct data models, from an EPrints repository to a Fedora repository. The largest area of work in Preserv 2 was on file format management and an 'active' preservation approach. This involves identifying file formats, assessing the risks posed by those formats and taking action to obviate the risks where that could be justified. These processes were implemented with reference to a technical registry, PRONOM from The National Archives (TNA), and DROID (digital record object identification service), also produced by TNA. Preserv 2 showed we can invoke a current registry to classify the digital objects and present a hierarchy of risk scores for a repository. Classification was performed using the Preserv2 EPrints preservation toolkit. This 'wraps' DROID in an EPrints repository environment. This toolkit will be another feature available for EPrints v3.2 software. The result of file format identification can indicate a file is at risk of becoming inaccessible or corrupted. Preserv 2 developed a repository interface to present formats by risk category. Providing risk scores through the live PRONOM service was shown to be feasible. Spin-off work is ongoing to develop format risk scores by compiling data from multiple sources in a new linked data registry.

Boston University Launches Digital Common Institutional Repository

Boston University has launched its Digital Common institutional repository. In February, the BU University Council approved a Scholarship, Libraries, and Open Access Archiving Initiative.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Boston University now has a Digital Common—a place where research and other academic materials can be stored, shared, and discovered.

The Digital Common is an example of an institutional repository, and it is yours to use. The launch comes just in time to help celebrate Open Access Week. It already contains about a thousand scholarly works, and library staff are currently working with others, such as the Philosophy Department and the School of Public Health, to add more

.

Canadian Association of Research Libraries and JISC Join Confederation of Open Access Repositories

Both the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and JISC have joined the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) as founding members.

Here's an excerpt from the CARL press release:

On October 21, CARL became a founding member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR). COAR is an international association of organizations that have a common strategic interest in open access to scholarly communication. COAR was formed out of a need to work together at the international level to promote greater visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of open access digital repositories.

Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has played a leadership role in the development of open access repositories in Canada. Through the CARL Institutional Repositories Program, the Association has assisted its members in setting up repositories on their campuses; and worked with other research organizations in Canada and internationally in support of open access. Participation in COAR is a natural extension of these activities. "We are delighted to announce our membership in COAR," said Tom Hickerson, chair of the CARL Institutional Repositories Working Group and Vice-President/President-Elect of CARL. "COAR membership offers CARL and Canadian research libraries the opportunity to have a greater influence on the direction and expansion of open access world-wide"

Here's an excerpt from the JISC press release:

Taking inspiration from the European DRIVER repositories project, which helps to enhance repository development, COAR takes this vision to an international scale; founding members of the Confederation include members from North America, China and Japan, as well as Europe. . . .

Neil Jacobs JISC's programme manager for digital repositories says, "JISC's work over the past few years in encouraging the growth of institutional repositories means that the UK now has a virtually unparalleled network of repositories that covers almost all of the research-base of UK higher education."

"Joining COAR at the early stage of its development means members will be able to contribute to shaping the organisation's objectives which will look at interoperability, raising awareness and promoting Open Access repositories, supporting the repository community and working with partners in closely related fields such as research management and publishing."

Duke University School of Law Launches Duke Law Scholarship Repository

The Duke University School of Law has launched the Duke Law Scholarship Repository.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Duke Law Scholarship Repository, launching online this week in partnership with BePress' Digital Commons, provides free, full-text access to more than 3,000 scholarly articles written by Duke Law faculty or published in Duke Law journals.

The repository offers a fresh presentation of Duke Law scholarship, but the idea of freely accessible legal scholarship and a commitment to open access to information has deep roots in both practice and theory at Duke Law School.

Under the leadership of Richard Danner, Duke Law's senior associate dean for information services and Archibald C. and Frances Fulk Rufty Research Professor of Law, the Law School became the first in the country to make all the articles published in its law journals — including back issues — freely accessible online in 1998. In addition, unlike most other law reviews, Duke's journals explicitly allow authors to post articles published in the journals without restriction on freely-accessible third party web sites, as well as on Internet sites under their own control.

By making scholarship as easily and widely accessible as possible, Duke does a service to the authors who publish in its journals, says James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law. "Imagine spending a year writing an article and discovering after you finished it that only someone with a sophisticated library or an expensive subscription could read it," he says. Duke's commitment to open access increases readership for authors, which include faculty from other schools as well as student scholars, and can contribute to higher citations for Duke-published work. "It's a huge benefit to both our students and to faculty authors," Boyle says.

In 2005, Duke Law furthered its commitment to open access by establishing an online archive of faculty scholarship, providing free access to the majority of articles published by Duke Law faculty. The contents of that archive are now the foundation of the Duke Law Scholarship Repository, which ultimately will include the text of lectures delivered at Duke Law, webcasts from scholarly presentations and conferences, publications of Duke Law's research centers, Duke Law student works, and more.

MIT Open Access Articles Collection Launched in DSpace@MIT

MIT has launched a new collection of authors' final submitted manuscripts in DSpace@MIT, the MIT Open Access Articles Collection.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The launch of the "MIT Open Access Articles" collection coincides with International Open Access Week to reflect the spirit of an MIT faculty policy established in March 2009.

The policy affirms the faculty's commitment "to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible."

The collection consists of the authors' final submitted manuscripts. Published versions may also appear where the publisher's policy allows for such posting. Both versions are identified for readers.

MIT authors are encouraged to send their papers to oapolicysubmissions@mit.edu or use a web form for inclusion in the collection.

The MIT Libraries are administering the policy under the guidance of the Faculty Committee on the Library System, and are maintaining a list of publishers who are fully cooperating with the policy.

Concordia University Launches Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository

Concordia University has launched Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement

Concordia University Libraries is proud to mark international Open Access Week (October 19-23) with the launch of Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository. Spectrum is a new digital resource which, in keeping with the university's strategic plan to develop community engagement and social responsibility, can make Concordia scholarship freely accessible to everyone via the internet.

Spectrum currently contains the full text of over 6000 theses and dissertations produced at the university from 1967 to 2003. It also offers Concordia faculty and researchers an additional venue for sharing their research using a simple process of self-submission. The name Spectrum reflects the variety of original research and creative activity that characterizes the scholarly output of Concordia University. The database, in development since 2007, is an initiative of the Concordia University Libraries supported by the Office of the Vice-President, Research & Graduate Studies.

"I am delighted to see the launch of this significant new resource," said Louise Dandurand, Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies. "The creation of a Research Repository speaks to Concordia's commitment to increase its contribution to world knowledge and promote public access to the results of publicly funded research."

"Research deposited in Spectrum is highly visible, because the site will be searchable using popular search engines such as Google and Google Scholar," added Jocelyn Godolphin, Associate University Librarian for Collection Services. "Concordia University now joins some 1200 other repositories round the world in providing a university-wide open access repository which will increase accessibility and preserve the scholarship produced by Concordia University researchers."

eScholarship Relaunched with New Services and Enhanced Functionality

The California Digital Library has relaunched eScholarship with new services and enhanced functionality.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Previously known as UC's eScholarship Repository, the new eScholarship offers a robust scholarly publishing platform that enables departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.

"Our relaunch of eScholarship reflects the enormous value we see in recasting the institutional repository as an open access publisher," says Catherine Mitchell, Director of the Publishing Group at the California Digital Library. "There is significant need across the University of California campuses for a sustainable infrastructure to support the publication and dissemination of research. In our efforts to respond to this need, we have watched our institutional repository evolve into a dynamic platform for the original publication of scholarly work." . . .

The relaunch of eScholarship brings new opportunities for digital publishing to the University of California and offers substantially improved services for previously supported publication types. Books published in eScholarship are now eligible for a combined digital/print publication service, courtesy of UC Publishing Services (UCPubS), a joint program of UC Press and the California Digital Library. In addition, eScholarship now offers conference lifecycle support, including mechanisms for proposal submission, program display, and the ultimate publication of proceedings.

Much of the site redesign has been focused on improving the quality of access to eScholarship publications. The site is optimized for Google searches; PDFs can be viewed in their entirety without download; and research can be shared easily through third party social networking sites and RSS feeds. Likewise, the ability to locate relevant scholarship within the new site is greatly improved as a result of the implementation of:

  1. a highly developed similar items finder
  2. visual snippets of keywords within documents (KWIC Pics) accessible from the search results page
  3. facets for narrowing search results by UC campus, discipline, and peer review– status
  4. keyword search capability within documents