ePrints.FRI

The institutional publications database of the Faculty of Computer and Information

Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Faculty of Computer and Information Science

University of Ljubljana

Miha Peternel

F@IR-PUBLISHING and F@IR-READING UNICA SEMINAR

VIENNA, NOVEMBER 25-26, 2004

Initiative for an institutional archive Prof. Dr. Franc Solina (September

2002) Open Archives Initiative ePrints software

from University of Southampton, UK Bibliographical databases in Slovenia

COBISS (main bibliographical database) SICRIS (research publications database) SciX (science exchange) in development

Why did we choose ePrints? Configurability Programmability

Open source, standard Linux software Widespread usage (147 known archives) Support (authors, mailing lists, users) Multilingual (interface & data) Web based interface OAI compatible

Setting up an ePrints server Hardware configuration Software configuration Security Backup Logging

Hardware configuration Off the shelf PC server

Pentium 4 2.4GHz 512K RAM

2 hard disks in a RAID configuration

2 network ports (public & secure) RedHat Linux Operating System

What does ePrints software do out of the box? It’s ready made to archive typical

scientific publications of an academic institution.

It provides web based interfaces for self archiving, editing, administration, and search functions.

It provides user management and email subscriptions.

Extending and customizing ePrints Subject areas Custom document types / subtypes Custom attributes (department, lab…) Multilingual attributes Default attribute values (facilitate

input) Web interface customization Google search

Language issues ePrints as a multilingual archive

Nearly any field can be multilingual We do store multilingual data, if available

ePrints as a multilingual interface Users can choose interface language Requires translation of templates

International character sets in practice Minor issues with Slovenian čšž in names

Phases of deployment Test install Test configuration Server install & configuration Departmental test Final configuration Initial deployment (2 months / 1 year) Deployment & maintenance

Access statistics = a rich source of information How often are our documents

accessed? (ranking) Where are they accessed from? Where are the referrers to our

archive? What search phrases were used to

find our papers?

People issues with self-archiving An anecdote I have to do it AGAIN Why is it not done automagically

from my home page by automated tools? Veracity of the deta Integrity of the data

What’s the benefit?

Carrots & sticks to motivate usage Generate documents that users

need Documents for the library Personal bibliography Departmental bibliography

Promote the work automatically OAI interface Promotion of the archive itself Archiving & Backup

Self-archiving institutional archives need sticks Beyond not-invented-here

in computer science Departmental chiefs must enforce

usage Researchers tend to be too focused on

getting worthy publications, they ignore other ways of dissemination

An anecdote: a visit from Microsoft Research

A live demonstration of usage Publishing a new document Administration of a new document

(editing)

Live demonstration

Access patterns Traffic analysis

AwStats Webalizer

Traffic reports (live)

The reach of ePrints.FRI Harvested by several OAI search

engineshttp://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Misc/eprints.fri.uni-lj.si.html

Harvested by CiteSeer Special status of ePrints archives

discussed with some search engines (Yahoo)

Usage patterns Department

Provides exact & cumulative data Some users like automation and backup

Faculty A place to publish student theses A single point for search and backup Preservation of electronic documents of

researchers that leave institution Students

A research tool for thesis examples Access to some book (pre)prints

Towards more usage There is value for the institution Encouraging self-archiving and

open archiving Promote use to other departments Improving ePrints.FRI

Adding little features users like (BibTeX…)

Conclusion Software for institutional open

archives is freely available It requires very little investment in

terms of equipment, publishing, editing and administration costs

It is up to institutions to mandate archiving in institutional open archives (and use collected data, access statistics…)

Thank you Miha.Peternel@fri.uni-lj.si ePrints.FRI.uni-lj.si www.eprints.org