Automated Article-Deposit FAQ

What is BioMed Central's Automated Article-Deposit?

Automated Article-Deposit populates institutional repositories remotely via the SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) protocol and transfers complete article content (including PDFs, additional files and article metadata) from one repository to another. The SWORD vision is 'lowering the barriers to deposit', principally for depositing content into repositories, but potentially for depositing into any system which wants to receive content from remote sources.

It aids customers by automatically populating their institutional repositories with newly published articles from their researchers, from BioMed Central and SpringerOpen journals.

Is my repository compatible with the SWORD protocol?

The SWORD protocol service has been designed to work with all major repository platforms such as DSpace, EPrints and Fedora. BioMed Central will continue to test and develop the service to ensure this is the case.

How often will the article be deposited into the institutional repository?

24 hours after an article is published in its final form (articles are transferred on a nightly basis).

Where will the article go once it is sent to a repository?

Once an institution has adopted Automated Article-Deposit, the Repository Administrator can set up a desired 'end destination' for all articles that are fed in by the service. This can either go into a workflow for the Repository Administrator who can then allocate a specific collection for the article to be stored, or directly into an allocated collection within the repository.

How will it be determined which articles are deposited in a particular institutional repository?

Articles are mapped to institutions using the same combination of affiliation information, email address stems, and institutional Membership payment/discount data that is used to generate the institutional Member pages. BioMed Central work with institutions to ensure that this mapping is as accurate as possible, but institutions can use their own repository workflow to double-check and approve articles before they appear in their repository.