creating an institutional e-print repository stephen pinfield university of nottingham
TRANSCRIPT
Creating an institutional e-print repository
Stephen Pinfield
University of Nottingham
Key questions
What are ‘institutional e-print repositories’?
Why create them? How should they be created? Where do we go from here?
What…?
Terminology
‘E-print archives’
‘Open archives’
‘Self archiving’
‘Institutional repositories’
‘E-print archives’ ‘E-print’ = “a digital duplicate of an academic
research paper that is made available online as a way of improving access to the paper”*
‘E-print archives’ = online repositories of this material Might contain:
– ‘pre-prints’ (pre-referred papers)– ‘post-prints’ (post-refereed papers)– conference papers– book chapters– reports– etc.
* Alma Swan et al., JISC report, 2004
‘Open archives’ ‘Open’ = freely accessible, ‘open access’ – as
Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), and/or ‘Open’ = interoperable – Open Archives Initiative
(OAI):– “develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim
to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.”– OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting – allows metadata
from different archives to be harvested and collected together in searchable databases
– creates the potential for a global virtual research archive
OAI Protocol: key concepts
End User
Data Providers
Service Provider
‘Self archiving’ ‘Author self-archiving’:
“…an umbrella term often applied to the electronic posting, without publisher mediation, of author-supplied research.”*
‘Institution self-archiving’ (or ‘self archiving by proxy’):Institutions may post articles on behalf of authors, where authors are members of the institution* Raym Crow The case for institutional repositories: a SPARC position paper. 2002.
Successful archives
arXiv– http://www.arxiv.org/
– Set up: 1991 at Los Alamos
– Now based at: Cornell University
– Covers: Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science
– Contents: 300,000 papers (pre-prints and post-prints)
Other archives:– CogPrints - Cognitive Science
– RePec - Economics working papers
Centralised subject-based archives
‘Institutional repositories’
“Digital collections that preserve and provide access the the intellectual output of an institution.”*
Aim: encouraging wider use of open access information assets
May contain a variety of digital objects e.g. e-prints, theses, e-learning objects, datasets
Institutions have:– resources to subsidise archive start up– technical / organisational infrastructures to support archives– an interest in managing and disseminating content
‘Repository’ avoids the ‘a’ word
* Raym Crow The case for institutional repositories: a SPARC position paper. 2002.
So, what am I talking about?
Open-access
OAI-compliant
institutional
e-print
repositories
Nottingham eprints
Nottingham eprints - record
Arc
Google search
Citebase
Citebase - citation analysis
Publication & self-archiving
Author writes paper
Submits to journal
Paper refereed
Revised by author
Author submits final version
Published in journal
Deposits in e-print repository
Why…?
Why institutional e-print repositories?
Context– structural problems in scholarly publishing – e-print repositories a possible solution
Benefits– for the researcher– for the institution– for the research community– for society in general
Context
Structural problems with scholarly publishing
‘Impact barriers’– authors give away their content and want to achieve impact not
income– want to disseminate research widely– but commercial publishers want to restrict circulation based on
subscriptions
‘Access barriers’– researchers want easy access to the literature– but most researchers do not have easy access to most of the
literature
Benefits for the researcher
Wide dissemination – papers more visible– cited more
Rapid dissemination Ease of access Cross-searchable Value added author services
– hit counts on papers– personalised publications lists
Literature analysis – text mining– citation analysis
Automated plagiarism detection
lowering impact barriers
lowering access barriers
Other benefits
For the institution– raising profile and prestige of institution– managing institutional information assets– accreditation / performance management – long-term cost savings
For the research community– ‘frees up’ the communication process– avoids unnecessary duplication
Other benefits
For society in general– publicly-funded research publicly available– public understanding of science– knowledge transfer– health and social services– culture
Common concerns Concerns:
– Quality control - particularly peer review – IPR - particularly copyright– Undermining the tried and tested status quo– Work load
Responses:– Institutional repositories complementary to the publishing status quo– Authors can publish in peer-reviewed journals and deposit papers in repositories– Many publishers already allow self-archiving– Help and advice on IPR essential– Open-access does not mean plagiarism– Help with administration
How…?
Installation
Initial installation relatively straightforward Free OAI-compliant software:
– eprints.org software (http://www.eprints.org)– DSpace (http://www.dspace.org) – CERN CDS (http://cdsware.cern.ch)– etc
Support networks Commercial software and services
Collection management
Document type– pre-prints v. post-prints– authors: staff, students, others?
Document format– HTML, PDF, Postscript, RTF, ASCII, etc.
Digital preservation policy Submission procedures
– mediated / DIY? – file format conversion, depositing e-prints, creation of metadata
Author permission and licensing terms– copyright statement– compliance with publisher copyright terms
Metadata quality standards– self-created metadata– metadata quality and visibility
Costs Start-up costs low
– hardware– software (eprints.org free) – installation– policies and procedures
Medium-term costs higher– advocacy – getting content– support– mediated submission / metadata
Ongoing costs significant– metadata creation / enhancement– preservation
staff time
JISC FAIR programme
JISC: Joint Information Systems Committee FAIR: Focus on Access to Institutional Resources Background: “inspired by the vision of the Open
Archives Initiative (OAI)” Aim: “to support the disclosure of institutional assets” Projects: 14 in ‘Clusters’: Museums and images; E-
prints; E-theses; IPR; Institutional portals Duration: Summer 2002 onwards (1-3 year projects) Total funding: £3 million New programme: 2005
SHERPA Acronym: Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research
Preservation and Access Initiator: CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries) Development Partners: Nottingham (lead), Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Leeds, Oxford, Sheffield, British Library, York, AHDS Associate Partners: Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham,
Newcastle, London: Birkbeck, Imperial, Kings, LSE, Royal Holloway, SOAS, UCL
Duration: 3 years, November 2002 – November 2005 Funding: JISC (FAIR programme) and CURL
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk
SHERPA aims
To construct a series of institutional OAI-compliant repositories
To investigate key issues in populating and maintaining e-print collections
To work with service providers to achieve acceptable standards and the dissemination of the content
To investigate standards-based digital preservation To disseminate learning outcomes and advocacy
materials
Where…?
Latest developments
Select Committee report and Government response
Wellcome Trust policy RCUK policy development Italian and Austrian rectors sign Berlin
Declaration Scottish Declaration US NIH policy
Harnad’s scenario
Universities install and register OAI-compliant e-print archives. Authors self-archive their pre-refereeing pre-prints and post-refereeing post-
prints in their own university's e-print archives. Universities subsidize a first start-up wave of self-archiving by proxy where
needed. The ‘give-away’ corpus is freed from all access/impact barriers on-line.
Then…. Users will prefer the free version? Publisher subscription revenues shrink, Library savings grow? Publishers downsize to be providers of quality control service+ optional add-
on products? Quality control service costs funded by author-institution out of reader-
institution subscription savings?Source: Stevan Harnad For Whom the Gate Tolls? http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm
The role of publishers
Adding value:
Managing quality control
Copy editing / formatting
Enhancing full text
Metadata services
