---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:55:08 +0100
From: David Prosser <david.prosser_at_BODLEY.OX.AC.UK>
To: JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: SHERPA Partnership wins Second SPARC Europe Award
*Apologies for Cross Posting*
Press Release
SHERPA Receives SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly
Communications, 2007
April 18, 2007
For more information, contact: David Prosser, david.prosser_at_bodley.ox.ac.uk
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland - As part of OAI5 - the 5th Workshop on
Innovations in Scholarly Communication, held at the CERN Laboratories in
Geneva, Switzerland, the SHERPA partnership <
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/> was
presented with the 2007 SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in
Scholarly Communications.
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Europe
initiated the Award in 2006 to recognise the work of an individual or group
within Europe that has made significant advances in our understanding of the
issues surrounding scholarly communications and/or in developing practical
means to address the problems with the current systems. In making the Award
to SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and
Access) the judging panel noted their advocacy for the adoption of
institutional repositories and their development of a suite of tools in
support of Open Access, including OpenDOAR (a world-wide directory of
repositories hosting freely available peer-reviewed publications), JULIET (a
listing of funding bodies' policies regarding deposit mandates) and RoMEO
(listing publishers' copyright policies in relation to articles deposit).
SHERPA was nominated for the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements
in Scholarly Communications by Dr Judith Wusteman of University College
Dublin. 'SHERPA is a trusted source of information,' said Dr Wusteman, and
'SHERPA's online services, namely OpenDOAR, JULIET and ROMEO, are its
greatest contribution to Open Access and the development of institutional
repositories.' Dr Wusteman noted that a 2006 study by the Johns Hopkins
University identified SHERPA's OpenDOAR directory to be the best directory
(out of 24 directories tested) of repositories worldwide.
Bill Hubbard, SHERPA Manager, said 'I am delighted to be able to accept this
award on behalf of the SHERPA partnership and in particular on behalf of the
SHERPA core team at the University of Nottingham. We would like to thank
SPARC Europe for the honour of being chosen for this award for our advocacy
activities and online services in the area of Open Access repositories. We
are pleased that the community has found these to be valuable and are
honoured by this recognition.
'We are proud of the services that we offer - RoMEO, JULIET and OpenDOAR -
and hope that these will make a contribution to the success of Open Access.
Our thanks to all those who have contributed or helped to build these and we
look forward to continuing community contributions.'
This is the second time the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements
in Scholarly Communications has been made. The first Award, in 2006, went
to the Wellcome Trust for their groundbreaking work in scholarly
communication. It is planned that the 2008 Award will be made during the
Fourth Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication, held at Lund, Sweden in
April of next year.
SPARC Europe <
http://www.sparceurope.org/> is an alliance of 110
research-led university libraries from 14 European countries. It is
affiliated with SPARC <
http://www.arl.org/sparc/> based in Washington,
D.C., which represents over 200 institutions, mainly in North America. SPARC
Europe and SPARC work to develop and promote new models of scholarly
communication that increase the access to and utility of the research
literature.
Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 12:19:38 BST