It's true, this development does not diminish the importance of the repository, and particularly the IR, in terms of deposit and management interfaces and repository services.
Instead its primary import is that *potentially* it: (1) frees up the storage layer, (2) offers a route to more flexible and economic computing infrastructure (large-scale, 'cloud' computing), (3) opens up new services, e.g. preservation services, and (4) reduces repository software lock-in. So potentially a step change in interoperability for repositories. Steve Hitchcock Preserv Project Manager IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 7698 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865 http://preserv.eprints.org/ At 14:38 23/04/2008, Stevan Harnad wrote: > > <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/394-Data-exchange-among > -disparate-repositories.html>Data > exchange among disparate repositories > > > > > Comment from Stevan Harnad: The demonstration (below) of the bulk > transferability of the contents of one OAI-compliant repository to > another is indeed welcome. It shows that it does not really matter > from the point of view of either accessibility or harvestability > where a research output is deposited (as long as it's in an > OAI-compliant repository). But where it is deposited still > <http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=+site%3Alistserver. > sigmaxi.org+central+%28institutional+OR+distributed%29&btnG=Search>matters > a great deal for the probability of research output being deposited > at all, and especially for the probability of deposit mandates being > adopted at all -- particularly deposit mandates on the part of > institutions, who are the providers of all the research output, > funded and unfunded, across all disciplines. > > The importance of the new > <https://secure.ecs.soton.ac.uk/notices/publicnotices.php?notice=1782>OR08 > demonstration of the transferability of > <http://roar.eprints.org/>Institutional Repository (IR) contents is > hence greatest for confirming that both institutional and funder > mandates can and should require deposit in the author's > institutional IR, from which central harvesters, indexers and search > engines, as well as Central Repositories (CRs) like PubMed Central, > can then harvest/import them. This > <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html>convergen > t > synergy would be best for the progress of OA. > > (The fact that external deposits can also be back-harvested to the > depositor's own institutional IR is also welcome and useful, but it > certainly does not imply that depositing willy-nilly anywhere is as > likely to scale up to systematic OA policies, generating universal > OA, as depositing, systematically and convergently at the universal > source: the researcher's own IR -- and then, where desired, > harvesting/exporting externally therefrom.) > Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., > O'Brien, A., Hardy, R. and Rowland, F. (2005) > <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11001/>Delivery, Management and > Access Model for E-prints and Open Access Journals within Further > and Higher Education. JISC Technical report. > > Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., > O'Brien, A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S. (2005) > <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/>Developing a model for > e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher > education. Learned Publishing, 18 (1). pp. 25-40. > > > [re-posted from Peter Suber's > <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/data-exchange-among-disparate. > html>Open > Access News] > > > ---------- > <https://secure.ecs.soton.ac.uk/notices/publicnotices.php?notice=1782>ECS > developers win $5000 repository challenge, a press release from the > <http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/>University of Southampton School of > Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), April 15, 2008. > > Excerpt: > Developers from ECS, Southampton, and Oxford University won a $5000 > challenge competition which took place at the > <http://openrepositories.org/2008/>OR08 Open Repositories > international conference. > > Dave Tarrant, Tim Brody (Southampton) and Ben O'Steen (Oxford), beat > a large field of contenders, including finalists from the USA and > Australia, by demonstrating that digital data can be moved easily > between storage sites running different software while remaining > accessible to users (watch > <http://www.zepler.tv/multimedia/OR08-CRIG/iPod/Mining_with_ORE.mp4>video) > . > This approach has important implications for data management and > preservation on the Web.... > > [W]ith the growth of institutional repositories alongside > subject-based repositories, and in cases where multiple-authors of a > paper belong to different institutions, it is important to be able > to share and copy content between repositories. > > Meanwhile the repository space has become characterised by many > types of repository software - DSpace, EPrints and Fedora are the > most widely used open source repository software - containing many > different types of content, including texts, multimedia and > interactive teaching materials. So although sharing content and > making it widely available (interoperability) has always been a > driver for repository development, actually moving content on a > large scale between repositories and providing access from all > sources is not easy. > > The OR08 challenge, set by the > <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/CRIG>Common > Repository Interfaces Group (CRIG), had just one rule for the > competition: the prototype created had to utilise two different > 'repository' platforms.... > > This data transfer was achieved using an emerging framework known as > <http://www.openarchives.org/ore/>Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE), a > topic that attracted one of the highest attendances at OR08.... > > > Comment [from Peter Suber]. Congratulations to Tarrant, Brody, and > O'Steen. I look forward to the day when institutional repositories > can harvest full-texts and metadata from disciplinary repositories > and vice versa. That will greatly reduce the temperature on the > question where researchers initially deposit their work (and where > universities and funders require them to deposit their work), and > greatly increase the security of deposits (on the LOCKSS > principle). Thanks to ORE and the tools developed by the > Southampton-Oxford team, this day is not far off. >
