The RepoMMan project is conducting a survey to help it design a software tool to help researchers work with digital repositories. From the survey site:
At a very crude level, a digital repository can be thought of as a database-driven website which is used to store, say, research outputs and which can be interrogated from other websites and through search engines to retrieve those outputs on demand. However, we believe that a repository can be useful to researchers well before they get to the finished-product stage. We hope that, through our work, researchers will be able to harness the potential of a digital repository to support them through the development of their research, from idea to output, whether they are working on their own or collaboratively. It is our intention that, when their research is completed, our software will allow the researcher to make the textual report available on the web and also to link it to such things as images, datasets and pointers to related papers or research. Effective location of research outputs available on the web relies heavily on the material being properly indexed through the use of 'metadata'; our tool will help generate this metadata. The results of this survey, together with information from personal interviews with active researchers, will help us design an effective software tool.
There is no deadline on responses, though a prize drawing among respondents who volunteer their email addresses will be held in mid-November.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/18/2005 05:46:00 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.
