A Technical Review of Open Access Repository Registries…

A Technical Review of Open Access Repository Registries :

“This document provides a technical review of the capabilities, benefits and drawbacks of two leading Open Access Repository Registries (OARRs) – OpenDOAR and ROAR. Both systems are considered qualitatively and quantitatively with a view to identifying those facets which provide value for a repository registry service.”

A methodology is identified to investigate the relative strengths of each system based on four main parameters: rate of growth, software, API capabilities, and the quality of data held in each system.

Interviews were conducted with members of the software development teams from both OpenDOAR and ROAR to provide insight into current working practices and technical roadmap for both systems. The output from these interviews are included below along with detailed investigation of each system. This included developing and using software client libraries in Python to review each API.

Additional interviews were also carried out with two API users to provide qualitative input on each systems usability in relation to a specific use case. These were Repository66 a repository mapping service and OA-RJ a deposit broker tool.

Although a direct comparison of OpenDOAR and ROAR is avoided the output is summarized for each system to identify the best and worst aspects. These can be seen as underpinning the shape of a new idealised repository registry.”

URL : http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/612/