As part of the project of updating the GP&PCRU website, I’ve been looking at how we can best manage access to the papers that the unit produces. A while back I found the DSpace @ Cambridge project page. DSpace looks like it can do the job, so I organised a meeting with Peter Morgan, the Project Director, and Magda Weglowska, the Digital Library Services Officer. My questions were:
What the benefits to the GP&PCRU are in joining the project?
Whether there are any costs?
What are the benefits to the users submitting digital material?
What are the benefits to the users interrogating the repository?
Is there support for SOAP / WSDL hook up with Reference Manager 11 to facility formatted reference lists with links?
Well, it appears that the news is good. Cambridge appear to be underwriting the costs, it sounds like the workflow for getting papers in the repositary isn’t too laborious, and although it sounds like they’ve gone over the top on the metadata you get asked to input, that can only help the searchability. It’s still full-text searchable from Google (and OAIster), and Cambridge have employed one of the the developers, so if it can’t tie up with RefMan’s webpublisher, it will be able to eventually. They may even make it hook up with Pubmed so that the metadata fields will populate from its data.
Was nice to meet people who are motivated to make OA happen.