APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING Dear Colleagues Please find copied below a Press Release regarding some upgrades to OpenDOAR. We are pleased to be able to announce an increase in repositories listed in OpenDOAR - and the even larger increase in repositories surveyed (now over 1000). We hope that this distinction will help to establish one of the key features of OpenDOAR of actually surveying repositories and not just auto-harvesting or pinging them. The fact that we are declining about 25% of surveyed sites is a measure of the value of a quality-assured approach. This also announces the release of the Tools that we have been working on to help repository administrators define re-use policies for the repository holdings. These tools are available from the OpenDOAR site - http://www.opendoar.org Regards, Bill PRESS RELEASE * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * For release Friday 15th September 2006 Press queries contact [log in to unmask] Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) Press Release OpenDOAR is pleased to announce an upgrade to its service, with more repositories listed and more features for both users and repository owners. OpenDOAR, the Directory of Open Access Repositories, has now surveyed over 1000 candidate sites world-wide for inclusion in the list. This has produced a quality assured list of 760 repositories - see http://www.opendoar.org A key feature of OpenDOAR is that all of the repositories we list have been visited by project staff, tested and assessed by hand. We currently decline about a quarter of candidate sites as being broken, empty, out of scope, etc. This gives a far higher quality assurance to the listings we hold than results gathered by just automatic harvesting. This approach is of benefit to end-users - minimising the chance of finding broken links, or archives holding only metadata, or irrelevant sites. It also supports the growth of "service providers" that need a quality assured list of repositories to draw from for their services. OpenDOAR recently came as the leader in a global survey of 23 repository listings carried out by John Hopkins University* for the purposes of analysing repositories and their holdings. OpenDOAR records a rich variety of repositories - many are institutional, but there is also a wide range of subject-based and governmental sites. The range of the list shows the spread of repository use around the world. OpenDOAR listings can be sorted by subject area, language, country, content type and results searched in combination with keywords. Results can be displayed in different formats, including a tabular form which can be changed and specified for an individual's interests. Entries highlight repository features such as the size of holdings, presence of e-alerts, RSS feeds and language. However, OpenDOAR is more than a passive directory and works to improve the quality of the repository network. The OpenDOAR team have produced tools to assist repository administrators in defining the re-use policies for their holdings. These tick-box tools are simple to use and help administrators clarify their permissions. They produce complete policies, ready to plug into a repository's structure. Dry as they sound, re-use policies are essential if a service provider is to know what use can be made of the information in the archive. For instance, can the full-text of a repository be data-mined? Can the metadata be collected and publicised elsewhere? Service providers need to be able to find if they have the right permissions to develop these innovative and value-added services which will benefit researchers. However, work by project staff shows that over two-thirds of repositories do not have these policies defined. OpenDOAR staff will be encouraging administrators to use the OpenDOAR tools to define how their holdings can be used and re-used. OpenDOAR will be talking to service providers to ensure that they are able to get the information they need to make full use of open access material. OpenDOAR can be used in this way as a communication bridge between repositories and services and is working to develop the community of repository administrators. For more information, go to the OpenDOAR site - http://www.opendoar.org * Survey paper at http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/151-Oliver_Swain-en.pdf BACKGROUND INFORMATION: OpenDOAR is a continuing project hosted at the University of Nottingham under the SHERPA Partnership. OpenDOAR maintains and builds on a quality-assured list of the world's Open Access Repositories. OpenDOAR acts as a bridge between repository administrators and the service providers who make use of information held in repositories to offer search and other services to researchers and scholars worldwide. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk http://www.opendoar.org OpenDOAR gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its funders; The Open Societies Institute, the Joint Information Systems Committee, the Consortium of Research Libraries and SPARCEurope OSI - http://www.soros.org JISC - http://www.jisc.ac.uk CURL - http://www.curl.ac.uk SPARCEurope - http://www.sparceurope.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * -- Bill Hubbard SHERPA Manager SHERPA - www.sherpa.ac.uk RoMEO - www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php JULIET - www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/ OpenDOAR - www.opendoar.org Information Services King's Meadow Campus University of Nottingham Lenton Lane Nottingham NG7 2NA UK Tel +44(0) 115 846 7657 Fax +44(0) 115 846 8244 * * * * * * * * This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. 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