The richness in knowledge has changed access methods for all stake holders in retrieving key knowledge and relevant information.
This paper presents a study of three open source digital library management software used to assimilate and disseminate information to world audience.
The methodology followed involves online survey and study of related software documentation and associated technical manuals.
« Pour faire l’état des lieux du libre accès (LA) en France en 2012, dix ans après la Budapest Open Access Initiative, nous avons examiné les deux voies : la voie verte (l’auto-archivage) et la voie dorée (publications dans les revues en LA). L’archive centrale multidisciplinaire HAL, créée en 2002 pour recevoir les publications scientifiques au niveau national, est reconnue pour sa qualité technique, mais elle ne propose que 10% à 15 % de la production scientifique annuelle française. Ce chiffre est à l’image de ce qu’offrent toutes les autres archives dans le monde où il n’y a pas d’obligation de déposer (pas de mandat). Les archives qui ont un mandat comme celle de l’université de Liège, ont atteint un taux de 80% en deux ans. Quelques archives institutionnelles se sont développées en France parallèlement à HAL, et deux d’entre elles (Archimer and OATAO) ont un bon taux de remplissage, grâce à l’implication d’un personnel dédié. Pour soutenir les offres éditoriales en libre accès le Centre pour l’Édition électronique Ouverte (CLEO) a récemment mis en place OpenEdition Freemium. Cette initiative pourrait favoriser le développement des revues en LA. Cependant, l’étude faite à partir des revues qualifiantes en Sciences Humaines et Sociales montre que les chercheurs sont peu encouragés à publier dans ces revues par les instances d’évaluation : peu de revues en libre accès françaises sont présentes dans les listes des revues qualifiantes de l’agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur (AERES). On note aussi une forte disparité entre les disciplines. Différents exemples de politique en faveur du libre accès sont donnés : un politique forte peut être menée par des universités, comme à l’université de Liège, ou par des bailleurs de fonds, comme le FRS-FNRS en Belgique ou par l’Europe. Elle peut être entreprise au niveau législatif comme aux USA, au Brésil ou en Argentine. En France les deux voies du libre accès sont tracées par des initiatives intéressantes. Le gouvernement français devrait accompagner ces initiatives et devrait s’investir dans une politique forte pour recevoir rapidement les bénéfices du libre accès. »
« Ten years after the Budapest Open Access Initiative, we have examined the current situation of Open Access in France via the two open access (OA) roads: the Green (self-archiving) and the Gold (OA publishing). HAL, a central multidisciplinary French archive launched in 2002, is recognized for its technical quality, but 10 years after its creation it only includes 10 to 15% of the annual French scientific output. This figure is similar to other repositories worldwide for which there is no mandatory policy (no mandate). On the other hand, archives such as that of Liège University which has a mandate, achieved an 80% deposit rate within two years. Other than HAL, a number of institutional archives are being developed in France, with Archimer and OATAO being two successful examples, thanks to dedicated library staff. In order to support the editorial offer in open access the Centre pour l’Édition électronique Ouverte (CLEO) recently launched the Open Edition Freemium. This initiative should favor the development of OA periodicals. However, the study based on the list of qualifying periodicals in Human and Social Sciences, shows that researchers are not encouraged to publish in these periodicals by national assessment bodies; very few French open access periodicals are on the different qualifying lists of the agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur (AERES – French research and higher education assessment agency). In addition, a wide disparity can be observed between disciplines. Different examples of strong policies in favor of OA are given: at the university level, as at Liège university, at the level of foundations, as at FRS-FNRS in Belgium, at the level of the Europe or at the legislative level, as attempted in the USA or Brazil or Argentina. In France the two roads are supported by interesting initiatives and these should be accompanied by strong French government policy to enable the benefits of open access to be rapidly reaped. »
URL : http://revista.ibict.br/liinc/index.php/liinc/article/view/502
Trends in Use of Scientific Workflows: Insights from a Public Repository and Recommendations for Best Practice :
« Scientific workflows are typically used to automate the processing, analysis and management of scientific data. Most scientific workflow programs provide a user-friendly graphical user interface that enables scientists to more easily create and visualize complex workflows that may be comprised of dozens of processing and analytical steps. Furthermore, many workflows provide mechanisms for tracing provenance and methodologies that foster reproducible science. Despite their potential for enabling science, few studies have examined how the process of creating, executing, and sharing workflows can be improved. In order to promote open discourse and access to scientific methods as well as data, we analyzed a wide variety of workflow systems and publicly available workflows on the public repository myExperiment. It is hoped that understanding the usage of workflows and developing a set of recommended best practices will lead to increased contribution of workflows to the public domain. »
URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/232
SW-MIS: A Semantic Web Based Model for Integration of Institutional Repositories Metadata Records :
« Despite providing a low level of interoperability, the method of Metadata Harvesting is very common within service providers for unifying access to the institutional repositories. On the other hand, the semantic web-based method of Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) has not been widely adopted by service providers due to its complexity as well as the small number of ORE compatible archives. The purpose of this study is to provide a new metadata integration model, through which resources harvested from repositories are aggregated and converted to Resource Description Format (RDF) so that can take advantage of integrating into the semantic web resources. For the purpose of this study a metadata integration model, namely SW-MIS (Semantic Web-based Metadata Integration System) has been developed, which involves four steps, including: metadata harvesting, exposing harvested metadata, creating Semantic Web compliance data sets, and providing the search and brows interface. For each step, a specific software tool was developed, so that together formed an information workflow system. »
URL : http://www.researchgate.net/publication/233855032_SW-MIS_A_Semantic_Web_Based_Model_for_Integration_ofInstitutional_Repositories_Metadata_Records
Relationships between users, resources and services in learning object repositories :
« In this paper we describe a proposal for defining the relationships between resources, users and services in a digital repository. Nowadays, virtual learning environments are widely used but digital repositories are not fully integrated yet into the learning process. Our final goal is to provide final users with recommendation systems and reputation schemes that help them to build a true learning community around the institutional repository, taking into account their educational context (i.e. the courses they are enrolled into) and their activity (i.e. system usage by their classmates and teachers). In order to do so, we extend the basic resource concept in a traditional digital repository by adding all the educational context and other elements from end-users’ profiles, thus bridging users, resources and services, and shifting from a library-centered paradigm to a learning-centered one. »
URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10609/17721
In 2009, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale University began building an open access digital collection of social science experimental data, metadata, and associated files produced by ISPS researchers.
The digital repository was created to support the replication of research findings and to enable further data analysis and instruction. Content is submitted to a rigorous process of quality assessment and normalization, including transformation of statistical code into R, an open source statistical software.
Other requirements included: (a) that the repository be integrated with the current database of publications and projects publicly available on the ISPS website; (b) that it offered open access to datasets, documentation, and statistical software program files; (c) that it utilized persistent linking services and redundant storage provided within the Yale Digital Commons infrastructure; and (d) that it operated in accordance with the prevailing standards of the digital preservation community.
In partnership with Yale’s Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure (ODAI), the ISPS Data Archive was launched in the fall of 2010.
We describe the process of creating the repository, discuss prospects for similar projects in the future, and explain how this specialized repository fits into the larger digital landscape at Yale.
EU FP7 Research in Open Access Repositories :
« Open access repositories are a reliable source of academic items that can be used for testing the capabilities of the webometric analysis. This paper deals with actions needed for extracting web indicators from bibliographic records in open access repositories, provides guidelines to support a further webometric study and presents the results of a preliminary web impact evaluation carried out over a sample of 1,386 EU FP7 output papers available from the OpenAIRE database. The European Commission project OpenAIRE aims, among other objectives, to provide impact measures to assess the research performance from repositories contents and, especially, of Special Clause 39 project participants within EU FP7. Using URL citations, title mentions and copies of titles as main web impact indicators, this study suggests that a priori the implementation of the mandatory clause SC39 to encourage open access to European research may be resulted indeed in a greater and more immediate web visibility of these papers. »
URL : http://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol1/Alvarez_EU_58.pdf