Re: Scientist on Institutional Repositories

["Sally Morris \(ALPSP\)" <sally.morris@alpsp.org>]

Another point to bear in mind about The Scientist is that it is published
by BioMed Central

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Email:  sally.morris@alpsp.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Janellyn P Kleiner" <jkleiner@lsu.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 1:03 AM

> The Scientist, Volume 19 | Issue 19 | Page 8 | Oct. 10, 2005, includes
> an editorial promoting institutional repositories. The important factor
> here is that this is an international publication directed to scientists
> -- not publishers, librarians, scholarly assn, etc.
>
> Why We Need Institutional Repositories
> By RichardGallagher, Editor
>
> It used to be that the record of scientific work was complete when it was
> all published in journals. For a select few -- read "Nobel Prize winners"
> -- your lab notebooks and correspondence were of interest. But it's
> becoming increasingly clear during the extraordinary information
> revolution in the life sciences that everything done in the lab needs to
> be captured, from journal club notes to eureka moments to lab parties.
> That means it's time for institutional repositories.
>
> Despite rapid explosion of knowledge in the life sciences, the full
> promise of digitization, storage and curation is nowhere close to being
> fully realized. The large-scale discipline-specific repositories that
> quickly became mainstream in information-intense branches such as
> genomics and proteomics are just the tip of the iceberg.
>
> The other seven-eighths comes in the shape of institutional
> repositories, such as MIT's DSpace [http://www.dspace.org], which
> provide the most comprehensive mechanism for digital preservation and
> dissemination. DSpace and other wide-ranging digital archives are truly
> transforming. They will house research data, journal articles, theses,
> teaching and learning materials, information for the general public,
> symposia and lectures, and informal accounts of life in the lab. While
> they are primarily being developed at universities, there is no reason
> why customized repositories shouldn't be introduced in other contexts,
> including industry.
>
> The introduction to DSpace gives this pep talk: "DSpace captures your
> data in any format -- in text, video, audio, and data. It distributes it
> over the web. It indexes your work, so users can search and retrieve
> your items. It preserves your digital work over the long term. DSpace
> provides a way to manage your research materials and publications in a
> professionally maintained repository to give them greater visibility and
> accessibility over time."
>
> At the moment, many individual scientists or laboratories maintain their
> own websites, which vary greatly in quality and currency. In contrast,
> data can be routinely uploaded to an institutional repository in a
> standard format. Shared software, security, and backup procedures across
> laboratories make for a much more useable prospect.
>
> Long-term preservation is another factor. Institutional repositories can
> migrate to new formats as they are introduced, ensuring permanence of
> the laboratory record. Only research journals have comparable levels of
> stewardship, and they accommodate just a fraction of pertinent
> laboratory output. The databases would also be more likely than existing
> journals to include accessible archives of negative data, which could be
> revisited when new information comes to light.
>
> And, according to an excellent overview from Clifford A. Lynch,
> Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information,1
> institutional repositories "support new practices of scholarship that
> emphasize data as an integral part of the record and discourse of
> scholarship. They can structure and make effective otherwise diffuse
> efforts to capture and disseminate learning and teaching materials,
> symposia and performances, and related documentation of the intellectual
> life of universities."
>
> This new generation of institutional repositories does not compete with
> existing databases, it complements and extends them. At the same time,
> it reaffirms the position of an institution (in the case of a
> university) as a scholarly center and community hub.
>
> Perhaps unsurprisingly, new career opportunities and meetings are
> springing up to service these developments. The first international
> conference on digital curation took place in the United Kingdom at the
> end of September,2 and the first international biocuration meeting takes
> place in December.3
>
> Forward-thinking life scientists will want to keep up with these and
> other developments in institutional repositories and database curation.
> We'll be sure to keep you posted.
>
> References
> 1. "Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship
> in the Digital Age" http://www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html
> 2. http://www.dcc.ac.uk/training/dcc-2005/
> 3. http://tesuque.stanford.edu/biocurator.org/intnlbiocurator.html
>
> Jane Kleiner
> Associate Dean of Libraries for Collection Services
> The LSU Libraries
> Louisiana State University
> Baton Rouge, LA 70803
> E-Mail: jkleiner@lsu.edu