This text documents my experiences at the Open Repositories 2007 conference, January 22-26, San Antonio (Texas). In a sentence I learned two things: 1) institutional repository software such as Fedora, DSpace, and EPrints are increasingly being used for more than open access publishing efforts, and 2) the Web Services API of Fedora makes it relatively easy for developers using any programming language to interface with the underlying core....
The opening keynote was given by James L. Hilton entitled "Open Source for Open Repositories: New Models for Software Development and Sustainability". He began with two over-arching statements: 1) "Open repositories have the same potential as the printing press", and 2) "We have a moment in time to build repositories in a collaborative environment." He elaborated by first mentioning Larry Ellison as his hero for open source. Why? Because Ellison, through fear, has made people re-think long-lost, closed questions regarding software supporting the enterprise. "We could become hostages to the software we use to do our everyday business." ...
C. Lee Giles described the challenges of building a chemistry repositories in "ChemXSeer: A Chemistry Web Portal for Scientific Literature and Datasets". The discipline of chemistry has traditionally not been as open as computer science or physics when it comes to sharing their content. Incorporating some of the ethos of the chemistry discipline in repository applications make the process more difficult. Similarly, chemistry is primarily not text-based making traditional text searching a challenge. Building on the success of CiteSeer, ChemXSeer hopes to bring aspects of open access publishing to chemistry.
Tony Hey gave the closing keynote address called "e-Science and Scholarly Communication". His well-balanced presentation described what he saw as an evolution in the scientific process. Oldest science (think Galileo) was experimental. Science then became more theoretical (think Einstein). Using computation he sees science moving in a new direction. By gathering, sharing, and synthesizing data & information in more systematic ways, Hey sees science evolving. He sees science as becoming data-centric. Take a mini-volcano as an example. Place sensors at the volcano. Monitory the sensors. Record the volcano's activity. Share the data freely and with many communities. Allow people to draw their own conclusions from the data and combine it with other data/information. He sees new types of peer-review in the form of social networking, and new types of ranking beyond journal impact. The keys to success in this regard surround acquisition, preservation, open access of data & information....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/12/2007 07:46:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
