Let me provide an explanation for the Italian situation, since I collected
data for this survey in March 2005. As Stevan points out, at the
moment there are 19 Italian repositories (12 with EPrints sw) in the
Institutional Archives Registry at
http://archives.eprints.org/.
Nonetheless, four archives do not belong to academic institutions, so
according to its organizers they were outside the interest of the survey
which originated the D-Lib article:
http://biblio-eprints.bo.cnr.it/ (research centre CNR)
http://e-ms.cilea.it/ (research centre IIMS, not existing in March,
moreover there is a double record for it in the registry)
http://eprints.rclis.org/ (disciplinary archive E-LIS, based in Italy but
international)
http://eprints.stoa.it/ (research centre STOA, just launched in March with
a few records for test purposes)
Other two archives are academic but not in use:
http://eprints.cab.unipd.it/ (installed in 2002 but not yet launched, with
a few records for test purposes)
http://mmdb.sissa.it/ (abandoned last year, when migrated to DSpace).
So, 7 academic repositories were working with EPrints sw in March 2005 in
Italy, 6 from the Institutional Archives Registry , plus an EPrints
installation at the University of Messina (never registered, but this
summer it migrated to CDSware).
I made a very careful analysis, collecting data directly from Italian
repository managers, who I publicly thank.
I have not read the D-Lib article yet, I just speak about the Italian data
behind it.
Hope this helps,
Susanna Mornati
Coordinator PLEIADI,
http://www.openarchives.it/pleiadi
CILEA - Inter-Academic Consortium for ICT,
http://www.cilea.it
At 12.54 19/09/2005, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>In the following Dlib Article:
>
> "Academic Institutional Repositories
> Deployment Status in 13 Nations as of Mid 2005"
> Gerard van Westrienen & Clifford A. Lynch
> http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september05/westrienen/09westrienen.html
>
>the authors write:
>
> "In examining the software used to support IRs, we found considerable
> variation in the level of software diversity from one nation to
> the next; looking across nations, only a few packages saw use in
> many different countries, most notably the EPrints software, which
> according to our respondents is used in at least 7 of the 13 countries"
>
>In fact, a quick check (near mid-2005, since when there has been very
>little change) of the Institutional Archives Registry (itself not yet
>an exhaustive list)
>
> http://archives.eprints.org/
>
>would have revealed the following Eprints archive counts for the
>(arbitrary) 13 countries sampled. Note that both the number of countries
>with Eprints archives and the number of Eprints archives in each is
>undercounted [incorrect Dlib estimate **, correction in (parens)]:
>
>Australia *7* (11)
>Belgium *0* (1)
>Canada *0* (12)
>Denmark *0* (2)
>Finland *0* (0)
>France *11* (11)
>Germany *2* (4)
>Italy *7* (12)
>Norway *0* (0)
>Sweden *3* (5)
>Netherlands *0* (0)
>UK *24* (35)
>US *+* (38)
>
>Total countries with Eprints archives: 10/13 (not, as reported, *7/13*)
>Total Register Eprints Archives: 22 countries
>Total Eprints Archives worldwide: 159
>
>This is just a spot-check of a subset of the data from:
>
> Table 4: Number and kind of software packages used for IRs.
>
>on which I happen to have some systematic data. I suspect though,
>on statistical grounds alone, that Tables 1-3 are equally erroneous
>and incomplete:
>
> Table 1: Academic institutional Repositories; state of the art in
> 13 countries - June 2005
> Table 2: Coverage of IRs related to type of objects (in percentage
> of total objects)
> Table 3: Estimations of disciplinary coverage of the IRs
>
>I sent these corrections to the authors and to Bonnie Wilson of Dlib well
>before the date of publication (hence closer to "mid-2005"), but alas no
>corrections were made. This is one of the risks of relying on hearsay
>soundings rather than systematic sources. (Note that the data from Canada
>are especially bad.)
>
>Caveat emptor.
>
>Stevan Harnad
Received on Tue Sep 20 2005 - 13:04:03 BST