Evolver: The Evolution of The Extended EPrints Ecosystem

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

General Track, 24x7 Presentations

The session was recorded and is <a href="https://connectpro.helsinki.fi/p9osriydlgh/">available for watching</a> (this presentation starts at 0:48:40)

The paper will consider what features of a repository should be considered essential and which ancillary and consider the evolution of the ecosystem, extensions and expectations of repositories in recent years. Digital preservation features, for example, such as those defined by the Preserv projects,[1] are generally implemented as add-ons, but, in a world where repositories are maturing and growing exponentially and where researchers and funders are demanding digital preservation of project outputs and research data, the repository is in a unique position to support digital preservation. As a feature-rich bibliographic system, repository platforms such as EPrints have also been increasingly in demand to fulfil the functions of publications databases. The repository has also be closely integrated with the workflow of creating and sustaining journals themselves: the SAS Open Journals service at the University of London demonstrates that integration effectively. For repository users, a research paper is the start, not the end of scholarly communications, and the paper will consider other functional developments. Since early forays of SNEEP and MePrints, the world has exploded with social networking, linked and open metadata, and research data, far outstripping those early experiments, and we will outline our experience of these too.