Latest Developments

SHERPA Receives SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications, 2007

sparc — 2008-03-12T15:45:43Z

SHERPA honoured in recognition of their advocacy for the adoption of institutional repositories and their development of a suite of tools in support of Open Access

As part of OAI5 (the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication), held at the CERN Laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland, the SHERPA partnership was presented with the 2007 SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Europe initiated the Award in 2006 to recognise the work of an individual or group within Europe that has made significant advances in our understanding of the issues surrounding scholarly communications and/or in developing practical means to address the problems with the current systems. In making the Award to SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) the judging panel noted their advocacy for the adoption of institutional repositories and their development of a suite of tools in support of Open Access, including OpenDOAR (a world-wide directory of repositories hosting freely available peer-reviewed publications), JULIET (a listing of funding bodies’ policies regarding deposit mandates) and RoMEO (listing publishers’ copyright policies in relation to articles deposit).

SHERPA was nominated for the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications by Dr Judith Wusteman of University College Dublin. ‘SHERPA is a trusted source of information,’ said Dr Wusteman, and ‘SHERPA’s online services, namely OpenDOAR, JULIET and ROMEO, are its greatest contribution to Open Access and the development of institutional repositories.’ Dr Wusteman noted that a 2006 study by the Johns Hopkins University identified SHERPA’s OpenDOAR directory to be the best directory (out of 24 directories tested) of repositories worldwide.

Bill Hubbard, SHERPA Manager, said ‘I am delighted to be able to accept this award on behalf of the SHERPA partnership and in particular on behalf of the SHERPA core team at the University of Nottingham. We would like to thank SPARC Europe for the honour of being chosen for this award for our advocacy activities and online services in the area of Open Access repositories. We are pleased that the community has found these to be valuable and are honoured by this recognition.

‘We are proud of the services that we offer - RoMEO, JULIET and OpenDOAR – and hope that these will make a contribution to the success of Open Access. Our thanks to all those who have contributed or helped to build these and we look forward to continuing community contributions.’

This is the second time the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications has been made. The first Award, in 2006, went to the Wellcome Trust for their groundbreaking work in scholarly communication. It is planned that the 2008 Award will be made during the Fourth Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication, held at Lund, Sweden in April of next year.

SPARC Europe and DRIVER agree to closer collaboration

sparc — 2008-10-30T14:36:38Z

SPARC Europe and DRIVER to cooperation in order to progress and enhance the provision, visibility and application of European research outputs through digital repositories.

As part of the LIBER 37th Annual Conference held at the Koc University Suna Kirac Library, Istanbul, from 1 to 5 July 2008, SPARC Europe and DRIVER have agreed to work closely together on promoting repositories, signing a Memorandum of Agreement to take this collaboration forward.

SPARC Europe and DRIVER confirmed a need for cooperation in order to progress and enhance the provision, visibility and application of European research outputs through digital repositories, in systems providing access to texts, data or other types of content.

DRIVER is a joint initiative of European stakeholders, co-financed by the European Commission, setting up a technical infrastructure for digital repositories and facilitating the building of an umbrella organisation for digital repositories. DRIVER relies on research libraries for the sustainable operation of repositories and provision of high quality content through digital repositories. SPARC Europe and DRIVER share the vision that research institutions should contribute actively and cooperatively to a common, pan-European data and service infrastructure based on digital repositories.

In recent years, research libraries have been pressed to improve scholarly communication by establishing digital repositories to expose institutional research outputs to the world. Networks of individual repositories and overarching information services for aggregation, retrieval, share and re-use are being built on the basis of institutional national and regional location, or by subject areas.

Collaboration between SPARC Europe and DRIVER is framed by their joint support for an Open Access model for repositories in research institutions. They will present a common lobby at a national and international level to leverage change through the scholarly community within respective institutions and countries. Their reciprocal support will ensure wider access to standards for interoperability between repositories, and the adoption of emerging technical standards to facilitate open archiving. This agreement demonstrates their joint commitment to promote a European network of repositories offering access to research outputs across institutional and national boundaries

David Prosser, Director of SPARC Europe, said ‘Europe is well placed to take a leading role internationally in the development of institutional repositories. A combination of institutional interest, progressive polices from funding bodies, and strong support from the European Commission creates the perfect conditions to foster an open research environment. DRİVER is a key component in underpinning the European repository infrastructure and we are very pleased to cement our already close relationship by signing this agreement.

Norbert Lossau, Scientific Coordinator of DRIVER and Director of Goettingen State and University Library commented: “DRIVER has always been understood to provide a permanent infrastructure for digital repositories. To achieve the necessary outreach, this infrastructure needs to build on collaboration with all relevant stakeholders. Signing the Memorandum of Understanding with SPARC Europe, the central lobbying and support organization for Open Access in Europe, is a significant and welcome consequence of the collaboration agreement concluded with LIBER in August 2007.”

European Commission launches open access pilot

sparc — 2008-10-30T15:02:09Z

EC pilot to give OA to results from approximatley 20% of FP7 projects - especially in health, energy, environment, social sciences and information and communication technologies.

The European Commission has announced a pilot to provide OA to results from selected FP7 projects.

"Fast and reliable access to research results, especially via the Internet, can drive innovation, advance scientific discovery and support the development of a strong knowledge-based economy. The European Commission wants to ensure that the results of the research it funds under the EU's 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7) with more than € 50 billion from 2007 - 2013 are disseminated as widely and effectively as possible to guarantee maximum exploitation and impact in the world of researchers and beyond. The Commission today launched a pilot project that will give unrestricted online access to EU-funded research results, primarily research articles published in peer reviewed journals, after an embargo period of between 6 and 12 months. The pilot will cover around 20% of the FP7 programme budget in areas such as health, energy, environment, social sciences and information and communication technologies."

SPARC Europe strongly supports this project, but urges the Commssion to move further and faster.

Welsh Repository Network (WRN) launch

sparc — 2009-03-18T10:28:46Z

Project to create a network of twelve repositories across Wales

The Welsh Repository Network, funded by JISC, will create a network of twelve repositories across Wales. Each higher education institution in Wales has been provided with the resources to purchase repository hardware or a hosted repository system along with support and assistance via the Repositories Support Project enabling them to operate effective institutional repositories.

This project helps to address the Welsh Assembly Government's Reaching Higher objectives in respect of improving institutional efficiency, increasing capacity and encouraging collaboration, but also helps to make a significant contribution to the overall aims and objectives of the JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme.

Significant New Deposit Mandates Announced

sparc — 2009-06-17T09:03:46Z

New mandates requiring researchers to make their papers available in open access have been announced in Belgium, Norway, and the UK

A trend in 2009 has been the accelerated progress in institutions, funders, and governments adopting mandates that require researchers to make copies of their papers available in open access ('green' open access). In recent weeks we have seen announcements from:

Belgium The four universities that make-up Académie universitaire Louvain now require their researchers to deposit.

Norway Both the Norwegian Research Council and University of Bergen have adopted open access policies - showing the importance both funders and institutions place on the dissemination of research outputs

UK UCL (ranked on of the world's top ten universities) has announced its policy, voted for unanimously by faculty.

Details of all existing mandates can be found ROARMAP