Hi Kat. Yeah, I found your appropriate web page discussing this policy
seconds after I sent the email, embaressingly.
Interestingly, I think many of us never noticed you included
non-open-access content until recently. Perhaps you've recently added
feeds which contain a lot more restricted content.
I am glad to hear you are considering creating an OA-only repository.
There is definitely a huge need for one. I hope you or someone else
creates a comprehensive one. Perhaps DOAR is already it, I will
investigate DOAR. For my purposes, I really need some kind of
machine-searchable API, but it looks like DOAR may very well contain
one. I will investigate. Thanks very much for the pointer, hopefully
DOAJ will meet my needs.
Jonathan
Kat Hagedorn wrote:
Hi Jonathan,
We have always included more than open access repositories. You can find our
collection development policy at:
http://oaister.org/restricted.html
We developed that policy about a year ago because of questions just like
yours.
We fully understand the need for an aggregator to only OA materials.
However, we are currently in the midst of infrastructure and hosting changes
for OAIster, and are not able to undertake that at the moment. We would hope
we can achieve this at some point. In the meantime, have you checked out
OpenDOAR? They have a service akin to what you're looking for, and they do
provide full-text searching.
http://opendoar.org/
Please let me know if you have further questions.
Regards,
-Kat
On 1/25/08 3:42 PM, "Jonathan Rochkind" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dear OAISter:
Hi, I have a question about the mission of OAIster. I had assumed that
OAISter would contain only 'open access' materials--that is, if a
'digital object' was listed in OAISter, than the public would actually
have access to that digital object without paying money.
Based on this assumption, I've incorporated an OAISter lookup (via
IndexData's publically available indexes of OAISter content) into the
Umlaut open source link resolver software. My thought was that I'd be
pointing my users to possible sources for what they are looking for,
that they almost invariably _would_ be able to actually access.
However, recently we got an 'error report' where our Umlaut link
resolver pointed the user to a resource in OAISter which turned out to
be for-pay, on BioOne. The OAISter provided URL got the user to a
metadata page, but BioOne then informed them this was not a publically
available article, and to see it they'd have to pay for it. I suppose
that metadata page could be considered a 'digital object' in and of
itself, but this violates my expectations of OAISter--if something is in
OAISter, I thought, one should actually be able to see it, not just see
a come-on asking you for money to see it!
The particular article can be found by searching a portion of the title
in the OAISter public search: "An ecological risk assessment for
insecticides". Which results in a record with URL:
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1897%2F1551-3793%2
82007%293%5B373%3AAERAFI%5D2.0.CO%3B2
When I go to that URL, I get a message from BioOne, "*You must have a
subscription to view the full text of this article."*
But maybe my expectations were incorrect? Can you tell me, does OAISter
intend to only have actual open access content? Do you consider the
inclusion of this article to be a mistake? Or do you have no such
intention, and you are happy to index any content with metadata provided
by OAI-PMH, whether the content is for-pay for public access? If the
latter, I wonder if you would consider making available an aggregator
consisting solely of the subset of OAISter content that IS publically
accessible? Because many of us really do have a need for such an
aggregator, and I thought that was OAISter.
Or can you give me a list of which 'data contributors' are open access
and which are not, and perhaps I can filter out the ones which are not
on my end? Or any other ideas you have?
Thanks for any advice,
Jonathan
-------------------
Kat Hagedorn
OAIster/Metadata Harvesting Librarian
DLXS Bibliographic Class Coordinator
Digital Library Production Service
University of Michigan
http://www.oaister.org/
http://www.dlxs.org/
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 734-615-7618
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
