17-19 October 2002 CERN/Geneva

       1. Document provider (server) implementation (in English)

         Thomas Krichel

       Discussion Guidelines:

Setting up an OAI compliant archive seems to be neither complicated nor onerous. However, the spread of such archives across universities and other research centres is slow. What are the obstacles to progress?
What are the basic elements required to get an archive on its feet?
What strategy do we need to fill a local archive?
What strategies do we use to get other universities to set up their own servers?

 

       2. Human-related problems around institutional OAI servers

        Fred Friend and Alison Buckholtz

        Discussion Guidelines:       

A.  Author-deposit problems.

1.      Inertia : “the present scholarly publishing system works for me, so why change it?”
2.      Tenure and promotion: “will publication on an institutional server get me promoted?”
3.      Research grants: “will publication on an institutional server help me with my research grant application?”
4.      Workload: “how much work will this entail for me?”
5.      Cost: “will I be asked to pay or will my research budget be cut to pay for this?”
6.      Quality: “will my high-quality research be associated with rubbish?”
7.      Relationships with publishers: “will this destroy my relationship with my regular publisher?”
8.      Relationships with peers: “will this destroy my relationship with my peers or my learned society?”

B. Management problems.

1.      Management inertia: “how does setting up an institutional server benefit my library/information service/university?”
2.      Cost: “how will I fund this development in the short-term/long-term?”
3.      Staff: “how will I recruit/retain the qualified staff I need?”
4.      Success: “will this enterprise succeed or will I look foolish when it collapses?”
5.      Workload: “I have 1001 other things to do”.  

C. User problems.

1.      Inertia: “I am used to going to my regular journals”.
2.      Quality: “can I trust the articles I find on a free server?”
3.      Copyright: “will I be breaking somebody else’s copyright if I quote from an article I find?”
4.      Ignorance (not necessarily a pejorative term): “I did not know this material was available.”
5.      Time barriers: “it took me an hour to find this article on the server”.

 

        3. Mise en service d'une archive numérique (in French)

        Hélène Bosc

        Discussion Guidelines:

La mise en place d'une archive OAi ne pose pas de gros problèmes techniques et financiers. Pourtant le développement de ces archives dans nos universités, dans nos laboratoires et dans nos instituts de recherche n'est pas très rapide.
Quels sont les freins?
Quels sont les appuis nécessaires pour installer une archive dans une université ou dans un laboratoire?
Quelle stratégie proposer pour remplir rapidement une archive?
Quelle stratégie pour inciter les autres universités et les autres laboratoires à implanter à leur tour un serveur d'e-prints?

 

        4. OAI protocols 

          Herbert van de Sompel and Carl Lagoze

        Discussion Guidelines:

        ....

        5. OAI software 

           Eric Van de Velde

        Discussion Guidelines:

As the Open Archives Initiative is coming into full bloom, more software is becoming available. This panel will discuss their experience with currently available software to set up OAI-compliant repositories and OAI-related services. Topics of discussion include, but are not limited to:

- How to get started? What software is appropriate for me?

- What is required to provide a reliable service?

- What features should developers of next-generation software focus on?

6. Long-term e-archiving

        Susanne Dobratz

        Discussion Guidelines:  

Looking at the motto of this workshop "Gaining independence with-print archives and OAI" it suggests first of all that using e-prints publishing methods especially in the sense of a scholarly non-profit publishing independently from any commercial publishing house offers a unique chance to scientists. A chance to publish their research results:

* Faster

* Cheaper

* More focused on the article's particular audience.

But the newly won independence from commercial publishing houses demands also a greater responsibility from the scientists. Firstly, the responsibility to find new methods to sell or distribute their scientific outcome and secondly the responsibility to ensure a long term availability of the published results. But it is not only the author that has to take on new responsibilities while using this new chance. Along the reformulated publishing process, all participants are asked to contribute.

Producer:

* Usage of document formats (text processing system) in order to produce originals, that don't need to undergo a first migration step before put into the e-archive.

* Clarify copyright

* Use digital signatures

Editor/Reviewer:

* Appropriate quality control: content and formal issues

* Define distribution channels

E-print Repository Operator:

* Ensure trustworthyness of repository through

o Technical security issues

o Following technical standards like the "Open Archival Information System" model as functional model for an trusted repository architecture, or standard metadata for archiving like Dublin Core, METS, EAD, use standards transport protocols within the archive and in communication with the outside environment

o Administrative Responsibility

o Organizational Viability

o Financial Sustainability

o Technological and Procedural Suitability

o System Security

o Procedural Accountability

Reader:

* Appropriated use of cited material

* Follow links and references

With the emergence of e-print repositories and the rising number of digital materials also demands to develop national preservation policies, as done in the UK, Australia and the US. A national preservation policy rules the legal deposit, the certification of trusted repositories, responsibilities, etc. How does the OAI movement fit into those thoughts?

Literature

1. Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities, an RLG-OCLC-Report. Mountain View, CA: RLG, May 2002.
http://www.rlg.org/longterm/repositories.pdf

2. Rebecca Guenther: The joint work of the OCLC-RLG Preservation Metadata Working Group, RLG Open Forum at ALA June 16, 2002,
http://www.rlg.org/longterm/forum02/guenther.html

3. Cedars Guide To : Preservation Metadata (March 2002),
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/guideto/metadata/

        7. OAI services

        Michael Nelson

        Discussion Guidelines:     

The Open Archives Initiative has grown from its modest focus on eprints and related services. The proliferation of stand-alone software and support libraries is shifting the focus from *how* to implement OAI-PMH to *where* to use OAI-PMH. The OAI-PMH is being deployed in a number of applications that are interesting because of their:

1. scale of deployment (e.g., national union catalogs)

2. novel use (i.e., beyond document-like objects)

3. interesting architectures and models (e.g., caches, aggregators, gateways, proxies, private & unregistered use, etc.)

We will discuss current projects and propose future projects that stretch and push the common conceptions for the scale and scope of OAI-PMH applications.

 

        8. Non-commercial scientific journals

        Les Grivell

        Discussion Guidelines:

a) What exactly is meant by the term ‘non-commercial’ (no-cost, low-cost, hidden-cost, loss-making, non-profit)?

b) What are the roles and expectations of different players in the publishing process e.g.

  o    authors (prestige through publication in ‘high-impact’ journals) data),

  o    readers (desire for open access to full text and associated experimental data),

  o    publishers (return on added value through editorial control and post-editorial   incorporation of  hyperlink and other e-resources)

  o    learned societies (journal publication as service to the community; source of income to further society mission)

c) What kinds of economic model are most suited to meeting the expectation of these players? It should be noted that:

   o   though traditional and the more recent  ‘free’-access e-publishing initiatives differ widely in their underlying philosophies, none of the latter are cost-free

   o   cost recovery, where explicit, is simply levied at different stages of the publishing process (author or subscriber pays for the right to publish or to access respectively

   o  current subscription-based models generally benefit from subscriber-base amplification of profit margin and this creates an effective barrier to easy transition from one model to another

   o   many subscription-based journals currently cover part of their production costs through levy on authors of page- and colour-figure reproduction charges

   o   non-subscription based models have as yet been operative for insufficient time to allow accurate assessment of their sustainability