Summary: The answer to the question of whether longstanding Arxiv self-archivers need either change their locus of deposit or do double the keystrokes if they are to deposit their papers in both Arxiv and their own Institutional Repositories (IRs) is that this can now be accomplished automatically, depositing only once, thanks to the IR software's SWORD import/export functionality. A second question is whether central harvesters of distributed IRs can provide (at least) the same functionality as direct-deposit central repositories (or even better). The provisional reply is that they can, for example, by building the functionality on top of the Celestial OAI-PMH harvester. It is now important and timely to demonstrate this capability technically, in the service of OA's fundamental objective: Getting the OA IRs filled. The demonstration that central harvesting of distributed IR deposits can not only duplicate but surpass the functionality of direct central deposit should help encourage funders to adopt the convergent IR deposit mandates that facilitate the adoption of complementary mandates by the universal provider of research output: the worldwide network of institutions (OA's "sleeping giant") -- rather than divergent mandates that fail to encourage (or even discourage) institutional mandates.
...SWORD is not a harvesting protocol; it is a deposit protocol. The party that initiates a SWORD deposit is the party with the material in hand. SWORD offers no way for a repository that wants material from another repository to request it....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/06/2009 10:56:00 AM.
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.
