creating an institutional e-print repository stephen pinfield university of nottingham

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

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk

Stephen.Pinfield@Nottingham.ac.uk