From Open Access News:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_12_12_fosblogarchive.html#a110329879885920653
JISC support for Southampton initiative
JISC
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/ has released a supportive statement on the
University of Southampton commitment to open access.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/news/667
University decision to offer free online access to all research
17 Dec 2004
Public online access to research findings emanating from universities,
enabled through funding the development of institutional repositories,
is a JISC priority (The forthcoming edition of JISC Inform, available
in January 2005, includes an overview of repositories).
Southampton University has, through its JISC-funded TARDis project,
http://tardis.eprints.org/
examined how institutional repositories can be used by researchers
to deposit their outputs, to provide a rich source of material to build
the UK's research infrastructure. Southampton is now taking its
TARDis 'experiment' institution wide, and has the full backing of its
most senior staff. Yesterday (16th December 2005) we received the
following from Pauline Simpson, a member of staff who has
worked on the TARDis project:
The University of Southampton is to make all its academic and
scientific research output freely available.
A decision by the University to provide core funding for its
Institutional Repository establishes it as a central part of its
research infrastructure, marking a new era for Open Access to academic
research in the UK.
Until now, the databases used by universities to collect and disseminate
their research output have been funded on an experimental basis by JISC
(the Joint Information Systems Committee).
The University of Southampton is the first in the UK to announce
that it is transitioning its repository from the status of an experiment
to an integral part of the research infrastructure of the institution.
'This decision by the University marks a real milestone in the
Open Access initiative,' says Dr Leslie Carr. 'At Southampton we
have a significant headstart since we created the EPrints software
http://www.eprints.org/ that is used by many UK universities, but
we expect and indeed hope that others will soon give similar status
to their own archives.'
Dr Carr is Technical Director of the open source EPrints.org software,
which is now used by around 150 repositories worldwide.
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse
Southampton established its repository in 2002 as part of the JISC
TARDis project (Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and Disclosure),
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/
to explore issues surrounding the Open Access paradigm. The repository
provides a publications database with full text, multimedia and research
data.
'We see our Institutional Repository as a key tool for the stewardship
of the University's digital research assets,' said Professor Paul
Curran, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. 'It will provide
greater access to our research, as well as offering a valuable
mechanism for reporting and recording it.
'The University has been committed to Open Access for many years. The
fact that we are now supporting it with core funding is another
tangible step towards its full achievement.'
The Southampton repository will now become a service of the University
Library in partnership with the University's Information Systems
Services and its School of Electronics and Computer Science (who
host the JISC-funded software development team).
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
Acknowledging the success of the partnership between the Library,
Information Systems Services and the Schools, the Librarian, Dr Mark
Brown, said: 'Collaboration between services and academic groups has
been the key element in the success of the project. The Institutional
Repository will now become an integral part of the electronic library
service at Southampton.'
See here for further information on the Southampton repository
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/
Received on Sun Dec 19 2004 - 12:57:33 GMT