...[Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis] has four [OA repositories], which is more than most universities. Two that launched recently also store content from outside organizations, a step beyond what most universities do.
The school's PolicyArchive is the nation's first comprehensive archive of public policy research. Its FOLIO is an archive of foundation-sponsored research on philanthropic activity. Both are free to use....
Most [repositories] are run by university libraries to archive their own content, such as theses and reports written by grad students and professors. The University of Maryland's library system, for example, has 9,000 items in its five-year-old repository DRUM....
"Eventually, what we're all aiming for is you can do a single search and search across all those archives," said Charles Watkinson, director of publications for the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in Greece.
Right now, there's Google Scholar for that.
The niche search engine indexes scholarly literature across several disciplines and sources, but it doesn't store everything forever, said Michelle Kimpton, executive director of the DSpace Foundation in Cambridge, Mass. Eventually details such as annotated sources and notes may come up missing. That won't happen with a digital repository.
The American School, which specializes in the advanced study of Greek culture, is developing its digital repository right now....
IUPUI is somewhat unusual for a university, as it not only has repositories for content from its professors and grad students but two other repositories for outside content.
"I'd say they're ahead of the curve," Kimpton said.
PolicyArchive and FOLIO are both joint ventures with outside groups, including the Los Angeles-based Center of Governmental Studies and the New York-based Foundation Center.
The projects aren't so much costly as time-consuming. IUPUI has dedicated the equivalent of 1 1/2 employees to building and maintaining the repositories for about two years. Daniels-Howell says it's worth it, though, because it increases the university's visibility....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/01/2008 01:45:00 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.
