Open Access Open Source and the Institutional Repository Richard Jones
Some Shaky Analogies ● Repositories of Source Code ● Permissive/Copyleft Licensing ● OS vs Proprietary ● Service Providers ● Repositories of Assets ● Creative Commons Licensing ● OA Repositories vs non-OA publishers ● Open Access Publisher/Repository provider
defining the fuzziness ● Open Source has a broader remit than just software ● Closed source and commercial service provision are very different things ● The degree of open-ness is defined by the licensing conditions: BSD, GPL... CC varieties: share alike, non-commercial...
some OSS advantages ● There isn't much in the way of closed source repository packages (weak) ● Interoperability can be affected by being locked into vendors and proprietary formats (strong) ● Repository use cases can be mould-breakingly complex (proxy) [next slide] ● There are plenty of open source, stable and mature repository packages (weak) [slide after next] ● Preservation opportunities can be damaged by the use of proprietary storage mechanisms (sometimes strong)
repository use cases can be complex The World Academic Web Pages Publications System Internal Repository Public Repository Mirror Public Repository Mirror Administrators
plenty of OSS packages The Big Three
final notes ● Open Access has partly sprung out of a community of OSS developers: academic institutions, research organisations, etc. ● Check the licensing conditions of the package – many OSS variations exist ● Commercial companies are starting to come around to the OSS approach. Even Microsoft are funding OSS projects, and may even be interested in EPrints for Windows!
Richard Jones Web and Database Technology Specialist Imperial College London Thanks for listening This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. To view a copy of this licence, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
References Jones, R and Andrew, T (2005) “Open Access, Open Source and e-theses: the development of the Edinburgh Research Archive”, Program, 39 (3), Jones, R, Andrew, T, MacColl, J (2006) “The Institutional Repository” Oxford: Chandos Publishing ARNO - CDS Invenio (formerly CDSWare) - DiVA - DoKS - DSpace - Eprints.org - ETD-db - E-Doc - Fedora - Greenstone - i-Tor - MyCoRe - OPUS -