EPrints: "World's Best Practice"

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

     ** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

In case there is even the slightest of doubts about which 
software I recommend for creating and maintaining an Open Access 
Institutional Repository (OA IR), it is, of course, GNU EPrints:

     http://www.eprints.org/

EPrints is free: the world's first, most widely used, and *by 
far* the most functional of all the available OA IR softwares. It 
is created for and specifically focussed on OA functionality, 
with the most advanced features, being designed and added 
continuously by the EPrints developmental team, as it keeps up 
with (and indeed often leads) the accelerating development and 
evolving needs of the worldwide OA movement.

Enough said. See the testimonials (and add your own!) at:

     http://www.eprints.org/news/features/worlds_best_practice.php

To find out exactly what the focus is on and for, see:

     http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/

Now, assuming you already have an EPrints (or other) OA IR, you can go
back to lobbying for OA self-archiving mandates for your institution
and research funder, the current number-one priority!

     Generic Rationale and Model
     for University Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html

     A National Open Access Policy
     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/weaker-OApolicy.htm

But don't forget to register your IR in ROAR (Registry of Open Access
Repositories):

     http://archives.eprints.org/

and to register your OA IR policy in ROARMAP:

     http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Your arch archivangelist,

Stevan Harnad
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html

PS Ceterum Censeo: *All* OA texts and their metadata should be 
directly deposited locally, in the author's own OA IR. That is 
the primary content-provider. If it is desired to also include 
them in one or more central repositories such as PubMed Central 
or Arxiv, they can and should be *harvested* from the local OA 
IR. EPrints is implementing automatizable import/export features 
for doing just that: Exporting to central repositories, as well 
as importing from them (e.g., papers already deposited centrally 
prior to the creation of the local IR).