Excerpts from a summary of the JISC Conference on Digital Repositories
(Manchester 6 June 2007)
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2007/06/news_repos.aspx
'A major conference on digital repositories took place this week in
Manchester, attracting nearly 200 delegates from around the UK...
'Rachel Bruce, JISC programme director [said that] JISC's Digital
Repositories programme... had given significant impetus to repository
development in the UK...
'Andy Powell of the Eduserv Foundation gave the first keynote
presentation on the "Repositories Roadmap"... The vision for
2010... is increasingly "not if, but when" newly published scholarly
outputs [are] made... open access. The situation now might therefore
require us to set a more ambitious target than that of a "high
percentage"... the Web['s] role as a means of discovery and access
need[s] to be emphasised more... [C]onceptualising repositories as
websites forces us to "think about their usability, their information
architectures and their accessibility."
'Dr Keith Jeffrey of the Science and Technology Facilities Council
gave the second keynote address. The benefits of open access
repositories, he claimed, include faster "research turnaround",
improved quality for the originators of research as colleagues were
able review the research more easily, as well as improved quality for
the community in general. They also support innovation, he continued,
improve education and public engagement with science and research
and enhance an institution's standing.
'In conclusion he said that the development of repositories and the
wider access to research outputs they enabled should not be delayed
by commercial interests.
'Dr Jeffrey then launched the Depot, a national repository open to
all UK authors to submit their research papers and other outputs
into [right now, if their institution does not yet have its own
Repository]. Claiming that the Depot marked an "important milestone"
in the development of a national infrastructure for repositories,
Dr Jeffrey explained that the Depot constituted a national facility
or set of services, including a reception service which redirects
authors to an institutional repository where one exists, as well as
ingest, storage, transfer and access services for the depositing of
research outputs, principally post-prints.
'[In] a keynote presentation... Professor Drummond Bone,
Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool and President
of Universities UK... began by saying that Universities UK
was "firmly behind" JISC's approach to the development of open
access repositories, suggesting that repositories were "vital to
universities' economies and to the UK economy as a whole."
'Like JISC, he continued, Universities UK believed furthermore that
the benefits of repositories included improved efficiency of research
processes, greater cooperation, improved learning and teaching,
a commitment both to preservation and to wider access...
'Further details of the conference, including presentations, will
be available shortly.'
Received on Sat Jun 09 2007 - 13:15:52 BST