Institutional Repositories, Long Term Preservation and the changing nature of Scholarly Publications

In Europe over 2.5 million publications of universities and research institutions are stored in institutional repositories. Although institutional repositories make these publications accessible over time, a repository does not have the task to preserve the content for the long term. Some countries have developed an infrastructure dedicated to sustainability. The Netherlands is one of those countries. The Dutch situation could be regarded as a successful example of how long term preservation of scholarly publications is organised through an open access environment. In this contribution to the Open Repository Conference 2010 it will be explained how this infrastructure is structured, and some preservation issues related to it will be discussed. This contribution is based on the long term preservation studies into Enhanced Publications, performed in the FP7 project DRIVER II (2007-2009, Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research II, WP 4 Technology Watch Report, part 2, Long-term Preservation Technologies (Deliverable 4.3/Milestone 4.2). http://www.driver-repository.eu/. The official report is downloadable at: http://research.kb.nl/DRIVERII/resources/DRIVER_II_D4_3-M2_demonstrator_LTP__final_1_0_.pdf ; the public version is part of Enhanced Publications : Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories, by Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer et al. Amsterdam, AUP, 2009, p. 157-209; downloadable as: http://dare.uva.nl/aup/nl/record/316849). The overall conclusion of the DRIVER studies about long term preservation is that the issues are rather of an organisational nature than of a technical one

Institutional Repositories, Long Term Preservation and the changing nature of Scholarly Publications

In Europe over 2.5 million publications of universities and research institutions are stored in institutional repositories. Although institutional repositories make these publications accessible over time, a repository does not have the task to preserve the content for the long term. Some countries have developed an infrastructure dedicated to sustainability. The Netherlands is one of those countries. The Dutch situation could be regarded as a successful example of how long term preservation of scholarly publications is organised through an open access environment. In this contribution to the Open Repository Conference 2010 it will be explained how this infrastructure is structured, and some preservation issues related to it will be discussed. This contribution is based on the long term preservation studies into Enhanced Publications, performed in the FP7 project DRIVER II (2007-2009, Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research II, WP 4 Technology Watch Report, part 2, Long-term Preservation Technologies (Deliverable 4.3/Milestone 4.2). http://www.driver-repository.eu/. The official report is downloadable at: http://research.kb.nl/DRIVERII/resources/DRIVER_II_D4_3-M2_demonstrator_LTP__final_1_0_.pdf ; the public version is part of Enhanced Publications : Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories, by Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer et al. Amsterdam, AUP, 2009, p. 157-209; downloadable as: http://dare.uva.nl/aup/nl/record/316849). The overall conclusion of the DRIVER studies about long term preservation is that the issues are rather of an organisational nature than of a technical one

Stewardship of the evolving scholarly record: from the invisible hand to conscious coordination

The scholarly record is increasingly digital and networked, while at the same time expanding in both the volume and diversity of the material it contains. The long-term future of the scholarly record cannot be effectively secured with traditional stewardship models developed for print materials. This report describes the key features of future stewardship models adapted to the characteristics of a digital, networked scholarly record, and discusses some practical implications of implementing these models. Key highlights include: As the scholarly record continues to evolve, conscious coordination will become an important organizing principle for stewardship models. Past stewardship models were built on an "invisible hand" approach that relied on the uncoordinated, institution-scale efforts of individual academic libraries acting autonomously to maintain local collections. Future stewardship of the evolving scholarly record requires conscious coordination of context, commitments, specialization, and reciprocity. With conscious coordination, local stewardship efforts leverage scale by collecting more of less. Keys to conscious coordination include right-scaling consolidation, cooperation, and community mix. Reducing transaction costs and building trust facilitate conscious coordination. Incentives to participate in cooperative stewardship activities should be linked to broader institutional priorities. The long-term future of the scholarly record in its fullest expression cannot be effectively secured with stewardship strategies designed for print materials. The features of the evolving scholarly record suggest that traditional stewardship strategies, built on an “invisible hand” approach that relies on the uncoordinated, institution-scale efforts of individual academic libraries acting autonomously to maintain local collections, is no longer suitable for collecting, organizing, making available, and preserving the outputs of scholarly inquiry. As the scholarly record continues to evolve, conscious coordination will become an important organizing principle for stewardship models. Conscious coordination calls for stewardship strategies that incorporate a broader awareness of the system-wide stewardship context; declarations of explicit commitments around portions of the local collection; formal divisions of labor within cooperative arrangements; and robust networks for reciprocal access. Stewardship strategies based on conscious coordination involve an acceleration of an already perceptible transition away from relatively autonomous local collections to ones built on networks of cooperation across many organizations, within and outside the traditional cultural heritage community

The IR has Two Faces: Positioning Institutional Repositories for Success

This article will describe ongoing efforts at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries to evolve the role of the institutional repository (IR) and to effectively position it within the context of the Libraries’ collections, research support, and scholarly communication services. A major component of this process is re-examining the fundamental aims of the IR and aligning it to the Libraries and the campus strategic goals. The authors situate UNLV Libraries’ experience within the context of the current literature to provide background and reasoning for our decision to pursue two, at times conflicting, aims for the IR: one for scholarly communication and another for research administration

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

Embracing the future: embedding digital repositories in the University of London

Digital repositories can help Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to develop coherent and coordinated approaches to capture, identify, store and retrieve intellectual assets such as datasets, course material and research papers. With the advances of technology, an increasing number of Higher Education Institutions are implementing digital repositories. The leadership of these institutions, however, has been concerned about the awareness of and commitment to repositories, and their sustainability in the future. This study informs a consortium of thirteen London institutions with an assessment of current awareness and attitudes of stakeholders regarding digital repositories in three case study institutions. The report identifies drivers for, and barriers to, the embedding of digital repositories in institutional strategy. The findings therefore should be of use to decision-makers involved in the development of digital repositories. Our approach was entirely based on consultations with specific groups of stakeholders in three institutions through interviews with specific individuals. The research in this report was prepared for the SHERPA-LEAP Consortium and conducted by RAND Europe

Open access to scholarly communications: advantages, policy and advocacy

The Open Access (OA) movement regards OA modes of disseminating research as the unequivocal future of scholarly communication. Proponents of the open access movement itself have, over the last ten years, carried out systematic research to show how OA can tangibly benefit researchers, institutions and society at large. Even so, the number of research papers being uploaded to OA institutional repositories remains relatively low, frequently based on concerns which often contradict the facts. Policies for OA have been introduced to encourage author uptake, and these are also discussed here. Briefly delineating aspects of these phenomena, this paper will then move on to outline and discuss advocacy for OA in organisations, and whether this should be “downstream”, in the form of informational campaigns, or “upstream”, in the form of top-down change management. This paper seeks to make a contribution to these issues in the OA sphere, by brining into the debate strands from the literature of the sociology of science and management science that will hopefully elucidate aspects of author reactions to OA, and the perceived changes that its adoption gives rise to

Harvesting for disseminating, open archives and role of academic libraries

The Scholarly communication system is in a critical stage, due to a number of factors.The Open Access movement is perhaps the most interesting response that the scientific community has tried to give to this problem. The paper examines strengths and weaknesses of the Open Access strategy in general and, more specifically, of the Open Archives Initiative, discussing experiences, criticisms and barriers. All authors that have faced the problems of implementing an OAI compliant e-print server agree that technical and practical problems are not the most difficult to overcome and that the real problem is the change in cultural attitude required. In this scenario the university library is possibly the standard bearer for the advent and implementation of e-prints archives and Open Archives services. To ensure the successful implementation of this service the Library has a number of distinct roles to play

Critique of Architectures for Long-Term Digital Preservation

Evolving technology and fading human memory threaten the long-term intelligibility of many kinds of documents. Furthermore, some records are susceptible to improper alterations that make them untrustworthy. Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs) and Trustworthy Digital Objects (TDOs) seem to be the only broadly applicable digital preservation methodologies proposed. We argue that the TDR approach has shortfalls as a method for long-term digital preservation of sensitive information. Comparison of TDR and TDO methodologies suggests differentiating near-term preservation measures from what is needed for the long term. TDO methodology addresses these needs, providing for making digital documents durably intelligible. It uses EDP standards for a few file formats and XML structures for text documents. For other information formats, intelligibility is assured by using a virtual computer. To protect sensitive information—content whose inappropriate alteration might mislead its readers, the integrity and authenticity of each TDO is made testable by embedded public-key cryptographic message digests and signatures. Key authenticity is protected recursively in a social hierarchy. The proper focus for long-term preservation technology is signed packages that each combine a record collection with its metadata and that also bind context—Trustworthy Digital Objects.