Depot's Time is Coming: Please Help Keep It Ready To Play Its Role

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:22:26 -0500

      SUMMARY: Please take the time to express your support for
      sustaining the Depot, a far-seeing and
      timely JISC Project that just happened to come slightly
      before its historical time! Please make sure the Depot is
      kept alive so that it can now come into its own, to
      perform the crucial role it was intended to perform, and
      set the example for the rest of the world. The reason the
      Depot has lain fallow (with only 66 deposits) to date is
      exactly the same reason virtually all of the
      world's Institutional Repositories (IRs) have been lying
      fallow: They are waiting for the "slumbering giant" (the
      world's universities and research institutions) to wake
      up and mandate deposit of their own research output.
      Meanwhile, funders have been providentially mandating
      deposit of the research they fund, but needlessly and
      counterproductively insisting upon institution-external,
      central deposit -- instead of mandating institutional
      deposit and central export (via SWORD) -- simply because
      not every institution has its own IR yet! Yet that is
      exactly the transitional role Depot was designed to
      fulfill: to provide an interim repository for any UK
      institution that has no IR yet, so its research output
      can be made OA until it sets up its own IR, to which its
      deposits can then be automatically exported. Well the
      token is at last beginning to drop for funders. So let's
      keep Depot alive to catch it, and help propel the UK (and
      by its example, the rest of world) to universal OA IR
      deposit mandates by funders and institutions alike.     
      -- S.H.

____________________________________________________________________________

            Consultation on Role of the Depot

16 February 2009

The role of the Depot must change before the end of 2009. 

We have come to the view that we should not decide upon the future of
the Depot without first consulting wider among those who are working
to promote and enable sharing of research through Open Access (OA)
self-archiving, both in the UK and internationally. For the first
part of that consultation process we approached a small number of
individuals and we are grateful for their comments; those have helped
frame the options we are considering. We now seek your input in a
short period of consultation over the next four weeks. 

The initial role of the Depot has been to provide the UK academic
community with an online deposit facility for eprints during the
interim period while Institutional Repositories (IRs) were being set
up. Among other policy issues this was to put in place material
support for the prospect of mandates for Open Access self-archiving.
The initial purpose for the Depot has been judged to have been
completed, and the project funding from JISC for the Depot as part of
JISC RepositoryNet is coming to an end.

The Depot was never planned to be a central repository that would
rival institutional repositories; rather it has complemented them by
assisting both researchers-as-authors by providing two support
functions. The first is that of re-direction, linking the potential
depositor of an eprint with the appropriate UK institutional
repository. This uses identity recognition and the OpenDOAR registry
of IRs. The second is that of ingest, enabling deposit of that
eprint, and thus exposure under terms of Open Access for those UK
academic authors not having an appropriate IR. Both functions are
computer-aided and without mediation by library or other support
staff. We have also carried out some project work (EM-Loader project)
to investigate how extraction of metadata from extant sources could
improve the deposit process, both assisting the depositor but also
helping to ensure good quality metadata.

Within EDINA and SHERPA, which developed and supports the Depot, we
have been carrying out an appraisal of options for an exit strategy
beyond its project funding. Could the Depot add value by continuing
as support activity for the open access agenda, or else when and how
to close the Depot? Please give us your views. 

Preliminary discussion with advocates of OA self-archiving have
indicated that there is value in continuing the Depot in order to
assist OA sharing of research output internationally, especially
where IR capacity is not yet comprehensive. There has also been
discussion about how to develop the re-direction capabilities more
generally, including support of OA deposit mandates by funding bodies
- for example, by helping their funded researchers locate the
appropriate IR.

The existing Depot service will be fully supported until at least 30
September 2009. Next month (March) or shortly thereafter we will
decide what to do based upon feedback from yourselves, and any other
developments, using the following six months to enact an agreed plan.
This might include re-branding or change of mission and message, as
well as arranging the transfer of the limited content that we have in
the Depot to some other repository or even handing over the running
of the Depot to another body.

Your comments are welcome, and should be sent to edina_at_ed.ac.uk,
marked 'Role of the Depot'.
Received on Sat Feb 21 2009 - 09:40:17 GMT