A major conference on digital repositories took place this week in Manchester, attracting nearly 200 delegates from around the UK.
The conference began on Tuesday with an overview from Rachel Bruce, JISC programme director, who explained that although the conference marked the end of JISC’s Digital Repositories programme, this in now way meant the end of JISC’s work and investment in this area....
Andy Powell of the Eduserv Foundation gave the first keynote presentation on the ‘Repositories Roadmap’, a vision and forward plan for the establishment and development of repositories in the UK covering the period 2006 to 2010. He said that the report originally suggested that the main challenges were in the areas of policy. However, he continued, “getting the technology right can have a huge impact on policy, culture and working practices.” ...
The vision for 2010 refers to the wish that a “high percentage of newly published scholarly outputs [be] made on available on terms of open access” ...The question now, as far as these goals are concerned, said Andy Powell, is increasingly “not if, but when…” The situation now might therefore require us to set a more ambitious target than that of a “high percentage”, he said....
Dr Keith Jeffrey of the Science and Technology Facilities Council gave the second keynote address. The benefits of open access repositories, he claimed, include faster “research turnaround”, improved quality for the originators of research as colleagues were able review the research more easily, as well as improved quality for the community in general. They also support innovation, he continued, improve education and public engagement with science and research and enhance an institution’s standing.
In conclusion he said that the development of repositories and the wider access to research outputs they enabled should not be delayed by commercial interests.
Dr Jeffrey then launched the Depot, a national repository open to all UK authors to submit their research papers and other outputs into. Claiming that the Depot marked an “important milestone” in the development of a national infrastructure for repositories, Dr Jeffrey explained that the Depot constituted a national facility or set of services, including a reception service which redirects authors to an institutional repository where one exists, as well as ingest, storage, transfer and access services for the depositing of research outputs, principally post-prints....
The second day of the conference began with a keynote presentation by Professor Drummond Bone, Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool and President of Universities UK who began by saying that Universities UK was “firmly behind” JISC’s approach to the development of open access repositories, suggesting that repositories were “vital to universities’ economies and to the UK economy as a whole.” ...
Further details of the conference, including presentations, will be available shortly.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/07/2007 02:43:00 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.
