Re: ARL Institutional Repositories SPEC Kit

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:13:52 +0100

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, ARL wrote:

> ARL Publishes SPEC Kit 292:
> INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES
> http://www.arl.org/spec/SPEC292web.pdf
>
> Since 2002, when DSpace and other institutional
> repository (IR) software began to be available,

I wonder why ARL refers to 2002 when EPrints, the first and
most widely used IR software, was created in 2000!

    http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD
    http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6

(Both EPrints and DSpace were created by the same developer, by the way:
then Southampton doctoral student Rob Tansley. But Rob created EPrints
first, and to our specs at Southampton -- before he was poached by HP
and MIT! Since then, EPrints has continued to develop under Southampton's
specs, under the tender care of Rob's successor and Eprints' current
award-winning developer, Southampton's Chris Gutteridge. Rob has since
moved on to google.)

    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/news/737
    http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july06/authors/07authors.html#TANSLEY

> The survey was distributed to the 123 ARL member
> libraries in January 2006. Eighty-seven libraries
> (71%) responded to the survey. Of those, 37 (43%)
> have an operational IR...

According to ROAR, there are at least 200 OAI-compliant
archives in the US, 115 of them institutional
or departmental IRs, 18 of them e-thesis IRs):
http://archives.eprints.org/?country=us&version=&type=&order=name&submit=Filter

> By a large majority, the most frequently used
> local IR software was DSpace, with DigitalCommons
> (or the bepress software it is based on) being
> the system of choice for vendor-hosted systems.

The ROAR figures for total US OAI archives are:

    DSpace: 55
    EPrints: 52
    Bepress: 44

The corresponding figures worldwide are:

    EPrints: 210
    DSpace: 167
    Bepress: 53

> The average IR start-up cost has been around
> $182,500 and its average ongoing operation budget
> is about $113,500.

For some less daunting cost estimates (for OA-focussed IRs that know
their target content -- institutional peer-reviewed research output --
and know how and why to get it deposited) see:

    http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4443.html

Stevan Harnad
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/
Received on Mon Aug 21 2006 - 23:42:34 BST

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