Verdict on DSpace Repository Platform: DSpace Has Problems

Stevan Chabot, The DSpace Digital Repository: A Project Analysis, Subject/Object, November 9, 2006. Excerpt by Open Access News Blog:

"...[T]here are some problems with DSpace. In the first place, the software is open source. While this does come with its own benefits, it also comes with its own problems. Commercial support for the software does not exist at this time, neither for installation nor for later technical issues. Libraries used to working with commercial software or ILS vendors may find implementation difficult. Furthermore, some who have previously implemented the software have had problems with performance while updating files and with the structure of the communities...

The major difficulty we have found is with DSpace’s handling of metadata. While we feel that the number of fields in Dublin Core is adequate for most if not all uses (DCMI Usage Board 2006), we are troubled by the lack of authority control when completing its fields....

Despite this fault, we do find that DSpace has many positive aspects. We find it to be an amazingly flexible and robust system which would be ready to handle almost any university’s needs right out of the box. It has the flexibility to handle all types of documents and methods of research, as well as the simplicity to encourage non-technical users towards the Open Access (OA) of scholarly research. We also feel that, given Smith’s intentions as cited above, the system would be an ready for a university to experiment in self-publishing even a part of its faculty’s research. Furthermore, while open source can have its drawbacks, it has some definite benefits. The software itself is customizable from the ground up....

It is the goal of the developer’s of DSpace to make the collection, preservation, indexing and distribution of digital research objects simple (Smith, 2003), to the extent that it encourages researches to self-archive their own work. Despite a few drawbacks that we have noted, particularly with the lack of control over metadata, DSpace is an excellent digital repository system supported by an active community of both users and developers. Given DSpace’s flexibility to archive any type of digital object and deal with any model of research within a department or other research community, it is a highly recommended system which can only improve with further development. This flexibility is increased by the fact that DSpace is open source..."

Google Segregates US From The REst of the World, and Provides Poor Explanation Why

As you might know, "Google blocks access to Google-scanned public-domain books outside the US. Finally we have Google's explanation:

Only books in the public domain -- books no longer under copyright -- have the download feature available. For users in the United States, this typically means books published before 1923. For users outside the U.S., we make determinations based on appropriate local laws. Since whether a book is in the public domain can often be a tricky legal question, we err on the side of caution and display at most a few snippets until we have determined that the book has entered the public domain. These books...may be in the public domain, but until we can be sure, we show them as if they are not.

We're working quickly to digitize and index as many books as possible so we can make Google Book Search truly comprehensive and useful. One way to treat digitized books that may be in the public domain would be to exclude them from the index until we were sure. However, our goal is to make the index as useful as possible, and that means including books as soon as we can rather than waiting for a perfect determination of public domain status. So, some books may initially show up in "Snippet View" and then later, be expanded to "Full View."

Comment. In most countries on Earth the duration of copyrights is the same as in the US. So why isn't it easy for Google to provide access to all of those countries as soon as it decides to provide access to the US?

At least Google admits that these books "may be in the public domain" and that it's temporarily treating them "as if they are not". That is, it hasn't wrongly classified them, but only delayed classifying them. Still, in most cases, it's hard to understand why any delay is necessary."

For links and update see the original posting at Peter Suber's Open Access News Blog (Why Google blocks access to public domain books outside the US, 11 November 2006)

Mandating Open Access: Step by Step, Department by Department

Arthur Sale, The Patchwork Mandate, a working paper, self-archived November 11, 2006. Excerpt by Peter Suber OA News:

This document is written mainly for repository managers who are at a loss at what policies they (or their universities or research institutions) ought to deploy. I make no bones about stating that there are only two pure policies: [1] requiring (mandating) researchers to deposit, and [2] voluntary (spontaneous) participation.

The obvious and no-risk solution is for the institution to require researchers to deposit their publications in the institutional repository. There is ample evidence that this is acceptable to over 95% of researchers, both in pre-implementation surveys and in post-implementation evidence. One Australian university is leading the world in collecting 70% of its annual research output and the fraction is rising....

An institutional-wide requirement to deposit in the IR is the logical and inevitable end-point. In fact it is exactly what is needed. Once such a policy is in place the IR manager’s approaches to researchers and heads of centers and all the plethora of feel-good activities actually work. People who are required to deposit their publications are grateful for advice. The occasional chase-up call is not resented. Just about everything that the university can put in place (for example publicity for deposits, awards for the best author or paper, assistance with self-archiving, download statistics, etc) will begin to work as it resonates with every academic in fulfilling their duty.

A mandatory policy will approach a capture rate of 100% of current research publications, but over a couple of years. Figures of 60-90% can be expected in a short time. See [this] for some data on how mandates actually work....

In the absence of mandates, every encouragement policy known to Man fails to convince more than 15% to 20% of researchers to invest the 5 minutes of time needed to deposit their publications. The percentage does not grow with time....This is a global experience....

So, many repository managers find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They can't convince the senior executives to bring in a mandate, and they know that voluntary deposition does not work. Fortunately there may be a middle way or even a transitional way ahead. I call it the patchwork mandate....So what is the patchwork mandate? Simply this:...Since you can't get an institutional mandate, you work towards getting departmental (school/faculty) mandates one by one. Each departmental mandate will rapidly trend towards 100% and needs little activism to maintain this level....

I think that the patchwork mandate strategy will probably work. We are trialing it in Australia. It won't achieve 100% content instantly, but it is a clear way to work towards that. You can even explain it to your senior executives and they probably won't stop you. They may even encourage you to try it.

Just remember that voluntary persuasion of individuals is known not to work beyond a pitiful participation level. Self-archiving needs to be made part of the routine academic duty, and this requires a policy endorsement by someone.

Comment. In the full paper, Arthur not only gives reasons to try it out, but practical implementation advice. I recommend the strategy and can add two reasons to think that it will work: Faculty are more amenable to persuasion from other faculty than from administrators or librarians, and examples are more persuasive than arguments. The best way to make the case for a strong OA archiving policy is the natural, viral appeal of a successful example.

Open Access Archives and Archiving in Turkey

Emre Hasan Akbayrak and five co-authors, Institutional Repository Movement in Turkey, in Proceedings Open Scholarship 2006: New Challenges for Open Access Repositories, Glasgow, 2006 (Thanks to Peter Suber OA News Blog).

ANKOS (The Anatolian University Libraries Consortium) established Open Access and the Institutional Repositories Working Group (OAIRWG) in order to raise awareness on Open Access (OA) and Institutional Repositories (IRs) among information professionals in Turkey. Ankara University is one of the first open access initiatives in Turkey. It has been involved in ANKOS since 2001, expressing a strong interest from the beginning. Over seven hundred and fifty scientific papers produced by faculty members have been self-archived [in the Ankara University IR] and made accessible since the beginning of 2006. The “Hacettepe University Electronic Theses Project” has been carried to make the full-texts of graduate theses and dissertations accessible through the Internet. The Middle East Technical University Electronic Theses and Dissertations project was started to provide web access to theses and dissertations that have been completed at the Middle East Technical University (METU) since April 2003. In September 2003, the METU Library Theses and Dissertations Archive was established and since that time students have been submitting their theses in both print and PDF. On the poster, the activities of ANKOS OAIRWG will be summarized and three examples of open archive initiatives in Turkey will be presented: Ankara and Hacettepe Universities’ Institutional Repositories and Middle East Technical University’s E-Theses Archive.

Israel Librarian Noteworthy: A Library Perspective on OA Business Models

Birgit Schmidt, Geschäftsmodelle des Open Access-Publizierens: Welche Perspektiven bieten sich hier für Bibliotheken? A preprint. (Thanks to medinfo and Peter Suber OA News) In German but with this English-language abstract:

Today, libraries serve as places where competences in dealing with the origin and dissemination of information are in demand. Once the document is ready for publication academic authors may opt out of a range of new publishing models. Increasingly, libraries foster Open Access. In this article Open Access business models are reflected on services and interests of libraries. Moreover, some development trends are identified.

Scholarpedia: a Peer-Reviewed Wiki

Scholarpedia is another attempt to combine the openness of Wikipedia with attribution and peer review. (Thanks to Wolfram Horstmann.) Launched on February 1, 2006, it predates Citizendium, which only launched last week. From the front page:

Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Indeed, both are powered by the same program - MediaWiki. Both allow visitors to review and modify articles simply by clicking on the edit this article link.

However, Scholarpedia differs from Wikipedia in some very important ways:

A. Each article is written by an expert (invited or elected by the public).

B. Each article is anonymously peer reviewed to ensure accurate and reliable information.

C. Each article has a curator - typically its author -- who is responsible for its content.

D. Any modification of the article needs to be approved by the curator before it appears in the final, approved version....

In Scholarpedia, every article has a person who takes care of its content and whose reputation becomes associated with this content, the Curator. The job of a curator is to moderate revisions of an article, accepting those that are relevant and rejecting those that are not. In some sense, a curator of an article in Scholarpedia is like a curator of a museum: He/she has to evaluate all new additions and decide which are worth public exhibition and which are not. A curator’s name and affiliation is clearly stated below the title of an article, so that his or her reputation guarantees the accuracy of the article....

Curators of Scholarpedia are leading experts in their respective fields, typically having Ph.D. or M.D., and affiliated with an academic or research organization....

In the initial phase of Scholarpedia, the curators are invited by the editor-in-chief. Curators can then elect other scientists to become curators of Scholarpedia – a practice used by many professional societies, such as the Society for Neuroscience....

Currently, Scholarpedia hosts Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience, Encyclopedia of Dynamical Systems and Encyclopedia of Computational Intelligence. Although all three will eventually be published in a printed form, they will also remain freely available and modifiable online.

For a sense of its quality, click for a random page a few times.

Source: Peter Suber News Blog

A Consortial Repository for Colorado

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL) has announced a consortial OA repository. From the October 20 announcement:

The Board of Directors of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries has approved initial funding for a consortium-wide digital repository project at its October 19, 2006 meeting. The project will use the Fedora open source software which was selected after a long evaluation process by the Institutional Repository Implementation Team, chaired by John Culshaw from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The Alliance Digital Repository (ADR) project allows the participating member libraries to develop a shared technical and development infrastructure to store, preserve and disseminate a whole variety of digital objects including images, text, audio, video, learning objects, data sets or any other kind of material. The project will make use of open source tools developed by others in order to fast track functionality. As new software is developed as part of the project it will also be made available to the open source community....

Each library will have its own local branding and view of the system. However, the development of a collaborative platform will allow libraries to save a substantial amount over each doing independent development.

The ADR project will bring two new staff into the consortium office, a project director and programmer. In addition, the Alliance will provide substantial in kind support from existing staff.

The Alliance is also hoping to work with other consortia and libraries interested in digital repository development and is in discussion with other possible partners.

Source: Suber P. OA News (24 Oct 2006) [FullText]

China will Mandate OA to Data from Publicly-Funded Research

Hawk Jia, China unveils plans to boost scientific data sharing, SciDev.Net, October 24, 2006. Excerpt by P Suber's OA News Blog:

Over 80 per cent of data relating to China's research into pure science — such as theoretical mathematics, physics and chemistry — will be freely available on the Internet, according to the country's top science official.

Xu Guanhua, China's minister of Science and Technology, revealed the country's data-sharing plan yesterday (23 October) at the international conference for the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), an event focused on promoting data sharing worldwide.

In order to achieve its goal, China will establish 40 scientific data centres by 2010, covering 300 databases relating to the environment, agriculture, human health, pure science, engineering and regional scientific and technology information. All of them will be openly accessed through a public portal initiated by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

According to Xu, most of these centres are already being constructed.

Meanwhile, 32 national standards — specifications for data processing and storage — are being worked out to support the data-sharing through these data centres. Xu revealed that 23 of them have already been completed....

However, there have been widespread complaints from scientists in China that data is not being adequately shared among the Chinese scientific community, which Xu said has undermined the country's goals for innovation.

"Part of the reasons [for this] is that the institutions owning these data hope to monopolise them so that they can produce more scientific results of their own," Qu Guosheng, a senior scientist from the National Earthquake Response Support Service, told SciDev.Net.

In his speech, Xu said that the science ministries and departments are aware of the problem. They are currently revising and designing laws and policies to make data sharing compulsory for publicly-funded research....

Comment by Peter Suber: "I believe that China is the first nation to mandate OA to data arising from publicly-funded research. Although 34 nations (including China, the UK, and the US) signed OECD's Declaration on Access to Research Data From Public Funding on January 30, 2004, China is the first to implement it. Kudos to all involved. The next step for China: mandate OA to peer-reviewed research articles arising from publicly-funded research. The next step for the rest of the world: follow China's lead on data sharing."

New Cross-Archive Search Engine

ScientificCommons is a new search engine for OA repositories worldwide. From its "about" page:

"ScientificCommons aims to provide the most comprehensive overview of scientific articles and contributions available on the internet. The major goal is to enable the free distribution of scientific knowledge to anyone. The growing number of Open Access Repositories worldwide with their vast number of scientific contributions are the source for ScientificCommons.

The lack of licences for scientific periodicals continues to be a major impediment to the fast access of current research results and thus not only hinders the swift spread of knowledge but also the research itself. In the last few years a movement was established under the keyword "Open Access" which aims to make scientific articles available to interested persons over the Internet free of any charge. The focus is especially on those publications which appear in approximately 24'000 scientific journals (peer-reviewed) world-wide. To achieve this ambitious goal, two approaches appear feasible [green and gold, or OA archives and OA repositories]...Looking at the practicability of these two approaches it becomes apparent that the barriers for [OA repositories] are considerably lower. The majority of the publishers (more than 90 percent) are already permitting the self-archiving of one's own publications....

PS by Peter Suber OA News: For a new service, ScientificCommons is very close to OAIster in its coverage. According to an entry posted yesterday to Open access by the numbers (a section within the Wikipedia article on open access), ScientificCommons currently indexes 8,275,984 records harvested from 573 repositories, compared to OAIster's 9,624,092 records from 698 repositories. Repositories not yet covered are invited to sign up for harvesting.

Congratulations to Beat F. Schmid, Thomas Nicolai, and Lars Kirchhoff who run the project from Switzerland's University of St. Gallen."

Source: Peter Suber OA News Blog

OA Advice for Authors. This time from South Africa

Eve Gray, Ensuring access to your scholarly publications - practical steps for authors, Gray Area, October 24, 2006. Excerpt:

South African academics are encouraged by national policy for publication reward to publish in accredited journals, with overseas journals considered the most prestigious. Leaving aside for a moment any critique of this policy, how can the successful authors ensure that the knowledge they have generated is not priced right out of the market for their colleagues and fellow-citizens? This is a real issue, given that the subscription prices of the big commercial journals have risen at about double the rate of inflation in the last decade. Even large and well-endowed universities are struggling to keep up their subscriptions to the leading journals (let alone all 24,000 journals out there), so it is no surprise that South African universities don't subscribe to a number of the journals in which their academics publish.
This came home to me when a colleague, Dick Ng'ambi, emailed to his department the other day 'Maybe Eve Gray has a point. I've just received this alert from Springer alerting me on the electronic publication of my article. The cost of accessing this article is US$30 otherwise UCT [University of Cape Town] has to pay (subscribe) to read its own output - are we being short changed?' ...Well, UCT does not have a subscription, so how do Dick and his colleagues get to read his article, short of paying $30 a view (the price of a thick hardback book in this part of the world, or around 15 hamburgers on the 'hamburger index')?

There are in fact some practical things that academic authors can do to ensure that they have maximum access to their own publications. The most important would be to publish for preference in an Open Access journal if there is one in your field. (And yes, they ARE peer-reviewed and there are high quality publications among the 2,000-odd OA journals, as well as one OA author who has recently won a Nobel Prize.) Next, it is advantageous to secure the right to archive a preprint or postprint of an article on your personal or institutional website....What is clear from research conducted on the impact of archiving, is that the availability of a pre-or postprint increases the downloads of the journal article and can have a significant effect on the citation levels of your work....

What local authors do not all seem to know is that most journal publishers - some 90% of them - including the major ones, do allow this practice. In Dick's case, Springer allows for both pre-and postprint archiving.

So how do you handle this if you are submitting or publishing an article? To check the policy of the journal you are thinking of publishing with, go the the Sherpa/Romeo website, where you can search on journals and publishers to establish their policies....

The really important thing, though, is that we need to lobby for policies in South Afri for the creation and mandating of research repositories in our universities. This is vital, given the increased access to and impact for our research. But more about that in another blog....

Source: P Suber OA News (24 October 2006) [FullText]

Happy birthday, MEDLINE

NLM's MEDLINE celebrated its' 35th birthday.

The Research Library in The 21st Century

Podcasts of the presentations at the University of Texas Symposium on The Research Library in the 21st Century (Austin, September 11-12, 2006) are now online. (Thanks to Cliff Lynch and Peter Suber)

Blackwell's position on Open Access

Jayne Flannery interviews Mike Fenton in the November 2006 issue of British Industry. Fenton is the group operations director of Blackwell Publishing. Excerpt by Peter Suber OA News (2 November 2006):

As an organisation, Blackwell is keen to be seen as an active participant in the evolution of the industry and as a key mover and influencer of overall trends within publishing. “In terms of understanding the way the market is evolving and developing, again we want to get there before anyone else,” he said, citing the example of the current open access debate. Traditionally, articles and publications have been made available to relevant persons and institutions through the charging of subscriptions. “The dilemma is that some funding organisations think that having paid for the research they should not have to pay again to obtain access to the output,” he explained.

Open Access can be achieved through a new model: the author or their institution pays the publishing costs and the publisher then makes the article available online free of charge. This shift to publishers selling their services to authors is controversial as it could create a barrier to authorship and may lead to lower standards. However, some authors and their funders (particularly the Wellcome Trust which is the largest independent funder of biomedical research in the UK with an annual budget of around £400 million) are asking for it so Blackwell is offering an author pays option with around 150 journals (largely in biomedicine) calling the service OnlineOpen.

Another aspect of Open Access is more of a challenge. Some funding agencies are demanding that their researchers self-archive for free access over the net within six months of publication. This could undermine the paid circulation of journals as librarians might no longer feel the need to pay when the material soon becomes available from institutional repositories and can be readily found through search engines such as Google. Blackwell is heavily involved in lobbying funding agencies and government departments directly or alongside the societies for whom it publishes to ensure a sustainable balance between the demand for Open Access and economic sense.