I’m glad to announce that the RepositóriUM team at Minho University
has finished the development of a new Add-on to DSpace, that we called
“Request Copy” (but others may call “Request
Eprint” or “Email Eprint”, etc.).
This first version of the Add-on (see description below) is available at:
http://wiki.dspace.org/RequestCopy.
As we plan to release a new version (including a third option/reply
– Change Access to Open Access) in the coming weeks, we will
welcome comments and suggestions from early adopters or testers. Please
send your comments and suggestions to: repositorium_at_sdum.uminho.pt
WHAT IS THE DSPACE REQUEST COPY ADD-ON?
It was recently suggested by Stevan Harnad that we develop a "request
eprint by email" feature for DSpace, similar to one that has recently
been implemented in GNU Eprints for deposits whose full-text access
privileges are set to Restricted Access (RA) rather than Open Access
(OA), in order to tide over any RA period with facilitated email
access. The Request Copy Add-on is this feature developed for DSpace
1.3.2.
The purpose of this feature is to increase both the content deposited in
Institutional Repositories (IRs) and its immediate usability by providing
a way to accommodate the (frequently unfounded) worries of authors and
their institutions about copyright infringement during any publisher
embargo periods on public self-archiving, by creating a semi-automated
mechanism whereby would-be users can request and authors can email an
individual copy of a full-text deposited with access set as RA.
This feature will be very important for advancing OA if universities and
other research institutions adopt the Generic Model for an Open-Access
Self-Archiving Mandate
(
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html). In this
model, depositing immediately (upon acceptance for publication) is
mandatory whereas setting deposit immediately to OA is merely encourages,
leaving the decision up to the author.
This is how the “Request Copy” feature works:
1- In all non-OA items (we consider non-OA all DSpace items/files that
have access different from Anonymous) there is a link to a “Request
a Copy to the author” Form, activated in the View/Open link and
also on the “Restricted Access/Request-a-copy” logo that we
added at the side.
2- The requester must enter his/her email address and name, and may add a
comment, and press a “Request-a-copy” button.
3 – An email is sent to the depositor (either one of the authors,
or their designee). The text of the mail is configurable (in our case we
made an express statement to forward the mail to the author(s) if the
depositor is not author). The email message contains a token.
4 – Using that token, the author may reply, by just clicking in one
of the two buttons available: “Send Copy”, “Don’t
send copy”.
5 – After choosing the Send/Don’t send reply, the author is
presented with one of the two message models (also configurable and
editable) for the reply. Finally, the author must hit the Send button,
and the message (including the file(s) if the author chose the Send
option) is sent to the requester.
Best Regards,
Eloy Rodrigues
Universidade do Minho - Serviços de Documentação
Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga
Tel: +351 253 60 41 50; Fax - 253 60 41 59
Campus de Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães
Tel: +351 253 51 01 19; Fax - 253 51 01 17
Received on Thu Apr 13 2006 - 19:56:59 BST