The COAR Next Generation Repositories Working Group aims to position repositories as essential components of a global infrastructure for scholarly communication, addressing challenges posed by outdated technologies. Key ideas discussed include pro-active repositories that can notify stakeholders of new resources and improved web-friendly repository technologies. The final report is expected in early 2017, with preliminary findings available for public review later this year.

1. Paul Walk
Head of Technology Strategy and Planning,
EDINA
p.walk@ed.ac.uk
@paulwalk
COAR Next Generation Repositories WG

2. what is COAR?

4. what is the Repositories
Next Generation Working
Group?

5. ...resisting the obvious Star Trek: Next
Generation joke here...

6. Repositories Next Generation Working Group
• Eloy Rodrigues, chair (COAR,
Portugal)
• Andrea Bollini (CINECA, Italy)
• Alberto Cabezas (LA Referencia,
Chile)
• Donatella Castelli (OpenAIRE/CNR,
Italy)
• Les Carr (Southampton University,
UK)
• Leslie Chan (University of Toronto
at Scarborough, Canada)
• Rick Johnson (SHARE/University of
Notre Dame, US)
• Petr Knoth (Jisc and Open
University, UK)
• Paolo Manghi (CNR, Italy)
• Lazarus Matizirofa (NRF, South
Africa)
• Pandelis Perakakis (Open Scholar,
Spain)
• Oya Rieger (Cornell University, US)
• Jochen Schirrwagen (University of
Bielefeld, Germany)
• Daisy Selematsela (NRF, South
Africa)
• Kathleen Shearer (COAR, Canada)
• Tim Smith (CERN, Switzerland)
• Herbert Van de Sompel (Los
Alamos National Laboratory, US)
• Paul Walk (EDINA, UK)
• David Wilcox (Duraspace/Fedora,
Canada)
• ▪ Kazu Yamaji (National
Institute of Informatics, Japan)

7. this is what we actually look like

8. To position repositories as the
foundation for a distributed, globally
networked infrastructure for scholarly
communication…

9. why focus on repositories?

10. 3 cheers for repositories!
https://flic.kr/p/JqESVd

11. cheer #1:
proven technology,
ubiquitous in our
institutions

12. cheer #2:
strong community
support

13. cheer #3:
distributed policy
control

14. The working group asserts that:
“The nearly ubiquitous deployment of
repository systems in higher education
and research institutions provides the
foundation for a distributed, globally
networked infrastructure for scholarly
communication.”

15. However, the working group also
recognises that:
“…repository platforms are still using
technologies and protocols designed
almost twenty years ago, before the
boom of the Web and the dominance of
Google, social networking, semantic web
and ubiquitous mobile devices.”

16. two of the ideas being
discussed

17. 1. Being of, not just on The Web
• obvious…but not really done yet
• the ‘splash page’ requiring human
mediation is a real problem
• “signposting the scholarly web”
• link HTTP headers
• http://signposting.org
• RDFa, schema.org bib extensions
• would involve very little or no effort
by repository administrators
• a small amount of software
development in repository systems

18. 2. Pro-active repositories
• repositories could become pro-active
components in an event-driven
scholarly system
• publishing ‘events’ such as the addition
of a new resource
(paper/dataset/whatever) to one or
more notification hubs
• third-party systems ‘subscribing’ to
these notifications - many potential
applications
• would involve very little or no effort by
repository administrators
• modest software development
http://www.paulwalk.net/2015/10/19/the-active-repository-pattern/

19. imagine if:
your repository could immediately notify a
funder that a compliant open-access
paper had been made available, and the
funder's system could then easily and
automatically retrieve a copy
depositing a dataset into an institutional
repository automatically notified a set of
data-processing & preservation services

20. many other ideas being discussed
• Discovery
• web-friendly repository technologies and architectures
• (quasi)peer-to-peer and/or notification pub-sub architectures
• Assessment
• overlay services on top of repositories using standardised registration,
open peer-review and quality assessment services
• Workflows
• support the full lifecycle of research
• cross-repository workflows
• automated and continuous publishing of research artefacts
• Impact
• reliable and interoperable impact metrics for repository content

21. thanks for listening!
more info:
http://bit.ly/coar-repo-ng
1. Preliminary findings for public review later this year
2. Final report in early 2017

22. I lied.