APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING
Dear Colleagues
Please find copied below a Press Release regarding some upgrades to
OpenDOAR.
We are pleased to be able to announce an increase in repositories listed
in OpenDOAR - and the even larger increase in repositories surveyed (now
over 1000). We hope that this distinction will help to establish one of
the key features of OpenDOAR of actually surveying repositories and not
just auto-harvesting or pinging them. The fact that we are declining
about 25% of surveyed sites is a measure of the value of a
quality-assured approach.
This also announces the release of the Tools that we have been working
on to help repository administrators define re-use policies for the
repository holdings. These tools are available from the OpenDOAR site -
http://www.opendoar.org
Regards,
Bill
PRESS RELEASE
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For release Friday 15th September 2006
Press queries contact bill.hubbard_at_opendoar.org
Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) Press Release
OpenDOAR is pleased to announce an upgrade to its service, with more
repositories listed and more features for both users and repository
owners.
OpenDOAR, the Directory of Open Access Repositories, has now surveyed
over 1000 candidate sites world-wide for inclusion in the list. This
has produced a quality assured list of 760 repositories - see
http://www.opendoar.org
A key feature of OpenDOAR is that all of the repositories we list have
been visited by project staff, tested and assessed by hand. We
currently decline about a quarter of candidate sites as being broken,
empty, out of scope, etc. This gives a far higher quality assurance to
the listings we hold than results gathered by just automatic harvesting.
This approach is of benefit to end-users - minimising the chance of
finding broken links, or archives holding only metadata, or irrelevant
sites. It also supports the growth of "service providers" that need a
quality assured list of repositories to draw from for their services.
OpenDOAR recently came as the leader in a global survey of 23 repository
listings carried out by John Hopkins University* for the purposes of
analysing repositories and their holdings.
OpenDOAR records a rich variety of repositories - many are
institutional, but there is also a wide range of subject-based and
governmental sites. The range of the list shows the spread of repository
use around the world.
OpenDOAR listings can be sorted by subject area, language, country,
content type and results searched in combination with keywords. Results
can be displayed in different formats, including a tabular form which
can be changed and specified for an individual's interests. Entries
highlight repository features such as the size of holdings, presence of
e-alerts, RSS feeds and language.
However, OpenDOAR is more than a passive directory and works to improve
the quality of the repository network. The OpenDOAR team have produced
tools to assist repository administrators in defining the re-use
policies for their holdings. These tick-box tools are simple to use and
help administrators clarify their permissions. They produce complete
policies, ready to plug into a repository's structure.
Dry as they sound, re-use policies are essential if a service provider
is to know what use can be made of the information in the archive. For
instance, can the full-text of a repository be data-mined? Can the
metadata be collected and publicised elsewhere? Service providers need
to be able to find if they have the right permissions to develop these
innovative and value-added services which will benefit researchers.
However, work by project staff shows that over two-thirds of
repositories do not have these policies defined.
OpenDOAR staff will be encouraging administrators to use the OpenDOAR
tools to define how their holdings can be used and re-used. OpenDOAR
will be talking to service providers to ensure that they are able to get
the information they need to make full use of open access material.
OpenDOAR can be used in this way as a communication bridge between
repositories and services and is working to develop the community of
repository administrators.
For more information, go to the OpenDOAR site -
http://www.opendoar.org
* Survey paper at
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/151-Oliver_Swain-en.pdf
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
OpenDOAR is a continuing project hosted at the University of Nottingham
under the SHERPA Partnership. OpenDOAR maintains and builds on a
quality-assured list of the world's Open Access Repositories. OpenDOAR
acts as a bridge between repository administrators and the service
providers who make use of information held in repositories to offer
search and other services to researchers and scholars worldwide.
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk
http://www.opendoar.org
OpenDOAR gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its funders;
The Open Societies Institute, the Joint Information Systems Committee,
the Consortium of Research Libraries and SPARCEurope
OSI -
http://www.soros.org
JISC -
http://www.jisc.ac.uk
CURL -
http://www.curl.ac.uk
SPARCEurope -
http://www.sparceurope.org
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--
Bill Hubbard
SHERPA Manager
SHERPA - www.sherpa.ac.uk
RoMEO - www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
JULIET - www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/
OpenDOAR - www.opendoar.org
Information Services
King's Meadow Campus
University of Nottingham
Lenton Lane
Nottingham
NG7 2NA
UK
Tel +44(0) 115 846 7657
Fax +44(0) 115 846 8244
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Received on Fri Sep 15 2006 - 18:28:16 BST