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SHERPA
What is SHERPA?
SHERPA - 'Securing a Hybrid Environment
for Research Preservation
and Access' - is a UK-based project.
According to project director Stephen
Pinfield, "the hybridity referred to
in the acronym is one where the
conventionally published literature
can coexist with Open Access e-print
repositories."
The three-year project, which started
in November 2002, is setting up
thirteen institutional Open Access
e-print repositories at UK universities.
These 'e-print archives' will contain
papers by researchers from the host
university, with refereed research
('postprints') the first priority. Using
eprints.org software, the archives will
be compliant with the stipulations of
the Open Archives Initiative (OAI; see
Open Access Now, October 6, 2003).
The other main aim of SHERPA is
to investigate preserving the content
digitally in the long-term.
Who is behind SHERPA?
SHERPA is funded by the Joint
Information Systems Committee
(JISC) and the Consortium of
Research Libraries (CURL). It is part
of the JISC-funded FAIR program
(Focus on Access to Institutional
Resources).
SHERPA is led by the University of
Nottingham. In addition, SHERPA
has six development partners - the
Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow
and Oxford; the 'White Rose
Partnership'" of the Universities of
Leeds, Sheffield and York; the British
Library and the Arts and Humanities
Data Service (AHDS). Each of the
universities and the British Library
will establish e-print repositories. In
the second phase of the project seven
more partners will come on board,
either as institutions or consortia led
by members of CURL.
SHERPA has recently announced an
arrangement with Oxford University
Press (OUP), to provide access to
articles by Oxford-University-based
authors published in OUP's journals.
Why does SHERPA exist?
"The starting point of SHERPA is the
view that the current system of
research publication is not working,"
say Pinfield and John MacColl of the
University of Edinburgh. Institutional
repositories provide a multi-disciplinary
free collection of research literature.
The aim is to improve scholarly
communication, encouraging authors
to supplement journal publication through self-archiving.
Project manager Bill Hubbard also
sees this as a way for institutions to
develop a "sense of intellectual
identity" - pulling together research
from different specialties in a way that
journals, with their subject-specific
focus, cannot.
A key factor in the success of institutional
repositories is the participation
of researchers at the institution - who
must deposit their content using the
archives. A large part of the SHERPA
project is therefore devoted to advocacy
within the research community.
www.sherpa.ac.uk
www.eprints.org
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