Types Of Repositories Research Articles

The implementation of initial data populations of environmental data and creation of a primary working database

Biological and environmental changes are creating a growing demand for historical and global data sets. Comparing up-to-date ecological and biological findings with historical statements has become a major part of scientific work in the field of ecology. This evaluation and comparison procedure is very time-consuming while the availability of raw data is very low. Comparisons between original findings – if available – require a lot of work from print publication to digitalization or transformation to appropriate data formats. The effective use of working capacity is a general issue and has become important, should the use of information technologies be invoked to minimize time-wasting copy and paste operations.In this paper we aim to present a working repository for terrestrial biological data. The implementation of this type of data repository will provide various services to participating scientists as long as the final aim is the publication of these repositories. Furthermore, the security and long-term availability of environmental data is an issue of increasing importance to the scientific community. Unrepeatable sampling events and any data thus obtained are precious in time series analysis. For this reason, a well-structured storage of data is necessary for easy accessibility, retrieval and comparability. This is an important issue for the community of environmental scientists. The need to construct and implement repositories should prevail against all hitches and we are therefore describing our on-going task with the primary population of this kind of data repository. A biological and ecological information system is a matter of public interest and should also be a key issue for ecologists.

Indian institutional repositories: a study of user's perspective

PurposeThe present study aims to investigate the experience, contribution and opinions of users of respective institutional repositories (IRs) developed in India.Design/methodology/approachThe survey method was used. The data collection tool was a web questionnaire, which was created with the help of software provided by surveymonkey.comFindingsIt was observed that 85.94 percent of respondents (154) were aware of the IR facility/service and 14.05 percent (26) were not aware of IR. More than half of the respondents, i.e. 52.43 percent (97), learned about the IR service through links provided on institutions' websites. About 36.21 percent of the respondents had not contributed to any type of repository, while 25.94 percent of respondents had contributed to their IR. A higher percentage (16.76 percent) of respondents felt it was an “easy and fast way to communicate research results”. The majority of the respondents, i.e. 113 (61.08 percent), were willing to deposit symposium/conference/seminar papers. The most important reason for contribution was found to be preservation of documents for the future. Peer review was very much acceptable as a quality control mechanism. More than half of the respondents (57.84 percent) wanted to provide open access without any barrier for their ideal repository.Research limitations/implicationsOnly users of the respective Indian institutional repositories are studied, and the findings are compared with other studies.Originality/valueThis is the first detailed study focusing on the users and their experience of institutional repositories.

A New Wave of Government Information Management: The Development of a Function-Based Classification Structure in a Canadian Government Organization

In an effort to improve government information management, people in Canadian government organizations have implemented a number of information management initiatives that are designed to meet the needs of their organizations. Industry Canada is developing its own information classification methodology, known as Business-based Classification Structure (BCS). BCS is unique in the sense that it is a function-based structure, as opposed to widely used subject-based structures. This article will explore the BCS as an information classification structure, how it can improve government information management regardless of shared information repository types, and its costs and benefits.

Combining literature text mining with microarray data: advances for system biology modeling

A huge amount of important biomedical information is hidden in the bulk of research articles in biomedical fields. At the same time, the publication of databases of biological information and of experimental datasets generated by high-throughput methods is in great expansion, and a wealth of annotated gene databases, chemical, genomic (including microarray datasets), clinical and other types of data repositories are now available on the Web. Thus a current challenge of bioinformatics is to develop targeted methods and tools that integrate scientific literature, biological databases and experimental data for reducing the time of database curation and for accessing evidence, either in the literature or in the datasets, useful for the analysis at hand. Under this scenario, this article reviews the knowledge discovery systems that fuse information from the literature, gathered by text mining, with microarray data for enriching the lists of down and upregulated genes with elements for biological understanding and for generating and validating new biological hypothesis. Finally, an easy to use and freely accessible tool, GeneWizard, that exploits text mining and microarray data fusion for supporting researchers in discovering gene-disease relationships is described.

Biobank Networking: The European Network Initiative and the Italian Participation

The evolution of the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Infrastructure, planned as a federated network of biological resources centers including all types of repositories of biological materials of human origin, toward a legal consortium of European Union Member States is described. The inception of Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Infrastructure gave a strong impetus to the reorganization of the Italian biobanks both with the formation of structured specific networks of disease-oriented biobanks as well as with the establishment of biobank networks with a regional constituency. This complex articulation requires a strong central coordination that the Health Minister entrusted to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità.

Assessing user requirements for a small scientific data repository

This paper presents data drawn from a survey of a group of environmental researchers concerning the desired characteristics of a data repository for their own content. It shows the importance of support for data preservation, for easy search access, and the use of standards, along with a number of other features. The data are contextualized in terms of issues related to differing needs and issues that result from the nature of scientific inquiry (little science vs. big science) and by the goals associated with different types of information repositories.

Representation and Recognition of Subject Repositories

Subject repositories are under-studied and under-represented in library science literature and in the scholarly communication and digital library fields. A study of practical literature on subject repositories reveals a relatively small proportion of practical articles to total articles found that discuss subject repositories in some way - where practical refers to articles that would help inform decisions on repository development and management. In addition to the lack of practical literature on subject repositories, registries, software, publishers, and database thesauri do not define subject repositories consistently, do not recognize subject repositories as distinct from other types of repositories, or do not recognize subject repositories at all. At the same time, subject repositories are frequently cited as highly successful scholarly communication initiatives, especially in relation to institutional repositories. The lack of subject repository recognition within the literature and among commonly used repository tools may be attributed to the isolated development of the largest subject repositories and a general lack of awareness about small-scale subject repositories. The authors recommend an increase of literature and research on subject repositories, development of standard language, guidelines, and best practices, and the formation of a community of subject repository professionals.

Towards Interoperable Preservation Repositories: TIPR

Towards Interoperable Preservation Repositories (TIPR) is a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create and test a Repository eXchange Package (RXP). The package will make it possible to transfer complex digital objects between dissimilar preservation repositories. For reasons of redundancy, succession planning and software migration, repositories must be able to exchange copies of archival information packages with each other. Every different repository application, however, describes and structures its archival packages differently. Therefore each system produces dissemination packages that are rarely understandable or usable as submission packages by other repositories. The RXP is an answer to that mismatch. Other solutions for transferring packages between repositories focus either on transfers between repositories of the same type, such as DSpace-to-DSpace transfers, or on processes that rely on central translation services. Rather than build translators between many dissimilar repository types, the TIPR project has defined a standards-based package of metadata files that can act as an intermediary information package, the RXP, a lingua franca all repositories can read and write.

Kritikalitätssicherheit der Endlagerung ausgedienter Kernbrennstoffe

Kurzfassung In dem nachfolgenden Beitrag werden die Grundsätze der Kritikalitätssicherheitsauslegung eines Endlagers ausgedienter Kernbrennstoffe erläutert. Diese Erläuterungen umfassen: Sicherheitsprinzipien der Kritikalitätssicherheitsauslegung eines Endlagers Konsistenz der Sicherheitsprinzipien beim Übergang von der Betriebsphase in die Nachbetriebsphase des Endlagers Die prinzipielle Abhängigkeit der Länge erforderlicher Nachweiszeiträume von den eingelagerten Nuklidinventaren und deren zukünftigen Entwicklungen, die durch den radioaktiven Zerfall sowie durch mögliche langzeitliche Entwicklungen des Endlagers bedingte Einwirkungen bestimmt werden Wahrscheinlichkeit des Eintretens von Kritikalität hinsichtlich bisher erwogener Einlagerungskonzepte und die Notwendigkeit des Nachweises der Sicherheit des Endlagers gegen potentielle Kritikalität in der Nachbetriebsphase Die sich zur Beantwortung der Frage der Sicherheit des Endlagers gegen potentielle Kritikalität für die Kritikalitätsanalyse ergebenden Aufgaben werden skizziert. Die Bearbeitung dieser Aufgaben macht die Modellierung komplexer Mechanismen (Szenarien), die zu Kritikalität führen können, die Modellierung der komplexen und verschiedenartigen Kritikalitätsexkursionen und die Modellierung der Auswirkungen solcher Exkursionen auf die Sicherheit des Endlagers erforderlich. Die Entwicklung entsprechender Modelle erfordert die konzertierte Zusammenarbeit vieler Fachdisziplinen. Es wird angeregt, die bereits bestehenden Kooperationen unter Einbeziehung der Kritikalitätsanalyse in einer nationalen Initiative zum Projekt „Endlagerung“ noch näher miteinander zu vernetzen. Aufgabe einer solchen Kooperation wird es auch sein, die Risiken aller Tätigkeiten, Einrichtungen und Randbedingungen, die mit der Abfallkonditionierung sowie der Beladung, dem Betrieb und der Nachbetriebsphase eines Endlagers verbunden sind, zu bewerten und so optimal auszubilanzieren, dass das Gesamtrisiko dem Minimierungsgebot genügt. Dies schließt eine Bilanzierung des Risikos einer potentiellen Kritikalität in der Nachbetriebsphase gegen die Risiken ein, die mit der Durchführung von Maßnahmen verbunden sind, die zur physikalisch sicheren Verhinderung des Eintretens von Kritikalität in der Nachbetriebsphase vor und während der Einladung in das Endlages erforderlich wären.

Increasing the Productivity of Interactions Between Subject and Institutional Repositories

The Subject and Institutional Repositories Interactions Study (SIRIS) was undertaken for JISC in 2008 with a brief to produce a set of practical recommendations to improve interactions between institutional and subject repositories in the UK in respect to scholarly articles. The study was based on interviews with stakeholders and a questionnaire distributed to institutional repository managers. The different types of repository and their functional requirements are defined. The authors consider the reasons repositories interact and the types of interaction they might engage in. The current situation in the UK repository system is described. Key findings that emerged from the study concern achievement of critical mass, collection priorities, metadata, identifiers and versions, and the issue of trust as it affects engagement on the part of community members. The authors develop a number of scenarios for possible evolutions in repository interactions in the near future, organized around four key drivers: population of repositories, statistics and metrics, preservation, and aggregation of research outputs. The study's final report addressed seven recommendations to various stakeholder groups within the repository community: JISC, research funders, repository managers, publishers, content creators, and software developers. These recommendations concern standardization, best practice, and community engagement and dialogue.

Comparing Repository Types

After two decades of repository development, some conclusions may be drawn as to which type of repository and what kind of service best supports digital scholarly communication. In this regard, four types of publication repository may be distinguished, namely the subject-based repository, research repository, national repository system, and institutional repository. Two important shifts in the role of repositories may be noted and in regard to content, a well-defined and high quality corpus is essential. This implies that repository services are likely to be most successful when constructed with the user and reader in mind. With regard to service, high value to specific scholarly communities is essential. This implies that repositories are likely to be most useful to scholars when they offer dedicated services supporting the production of new knowledge. Along these lines, challenges and barriers to repository development may be identified in three key dimensions, i.e., identification and deposit of content, access and use of services, and preservation of content and sustainability of service. An indicative comparison of challenges and barriers in some major world regions is offered.

Data Stewardship: Environmental Data Curation and a Web-of-Repositories

Scientific researchers today frequently package measurements and associated metadata as digital datasets in anticipation of storage in data repositories. Through the lens of environmental data stewardship, we consider the data repository as an organizational element central to data curation. One aspect of non-commercial repositories, their distance-from-origin of the data, is explored in terms of near and remote categories. Three idealized repository types are distinguished – local, center, and archive - paralleling research, resource, and reference collection categories respectively. Repository type characteristics such as scope, structure, and goals are discussed. Repository similarities in terms of roles, activities and responsibilities are also examined. Data stewardship is related to care of research data and responsible scientific communication supported by an infrastructure that coordinates curation activities; data curation is defined as a set of repeated and repeatable activities focusing on tending data and creating data products within a particular arena. The concept of “sphere-of-context” is introduced as an aid to distinguishing repository types. Conceptualizing a “web-of-repositories” accommodates a variety of repository types and represents an ecologically inclusive approach to data curation.

Quantitative Analysis of Learning Object Repositories

This paper conducts the first detailed quantitative study of the process of publication of learning objects in repositories. This process has been often discussed theoretically, but never empirically evaluated. Several question related to basic characteristics of the publication process are raised at the beginning of the paper and answered through quantitative analysis. To provide a wide view of the publication process, this paper analyzes four types of repositories: Learning Object Repositories, Learning Object Referatories, Open Courseware Initiatives, and Learning Management Systems. For comparison, Institutional Repositories are also analyzed. Three repository characteristics are measured: size, growth, and contributor base. The main findings are that the amount of learning objects is distributed among repositories according to a power law, the repositories mostly grow linearly, and the amount of learning objects published by each contributor follows heavy-tailed distributions. The paper finally discusses the implications that this findings could have in the design and operation of Learning Object Repositories.

Akademinė elektroninė leidyba Lietuvoje: požymiai, galimybės, problemos

It is of remarkable importance for publishing academic, especially research articles, that carefully selected, reviewed and prepared research articles, conference proceedings were published and distributed not only in a traditional, but also in an electronic way. The effective use of contemporary possibilities of electronic publishing is important for wider distribution of publications in an electronic space. The article analyses presentation ways of research articles published by Lithuanian higher education institutions and the use of contemporary technologies in electronic publishing for the purpose of wider distribution of publications in the world. Different types of institutional repositories in the world and Lithuania, their main goals, advantages and disadvantages, the most important criteria for the selection of institutional repositories type were presented in the article. Digital object identifiers (URN, PURL, Doi, etc.) were studied in order to determine their purpose, their differences and criteria which are important for their selection. The findings of the study suggest that Lithuanian academic publishers do not really make use of well-known and widely accepted, sometimes even free of charge, electronic publishing services. Article in Lithuanian. Akademinė elektroninė leidyba Lietuvoje: požymiai, galimybės, problemos Santrauka. Akademinėje,  ypač  mokslo  leidinių,  leidyboje  svarbu,  kad  kruopščiai  atrinkti,  recenzuoti  ir  parengti  mokslo žurnalų, konferencijų rinkinių straipsniai būtų ne tik išspausdinti ir išplatinti tradiciniu būdu. Būtina kuo platesnei jų sklaidai elektroninėje terpėje efektyviai naudoti šiuolaikines elektroninės leidybos galimybes. Straipsnyje nagrinėjamas Lietuvos aukštųjų mokyklų leidžiamų mokslo žurnalų pateikimo būdas internete, šiuolaikinių technologijų naudojimas elektroninėje leidyboje siekiant  platesnės  leidinių sklaidos  pasaulyje,  palyginami  institucinių  talpyklų  tipai  pasaulyje  ir  Lietuvoje,  jų  pagrindiniai uždaviniai, privalumai ir  trūkumai,  svarbiausi  kriterijai  renkantis  institucinės  talpyklos  tipą.  Nagrinėjama,  kokį  vaidmenį akademinėje e. leidyboje atlieka skaitmeniniai objekto identifikatoriai (URN, PURL, Doi ir kt.), kuo jie skiriasi ir kokiais kriterijais reikėtų vadovautis juos renkantis. Atlikta analizė parodė, kad Lietuvos akademiniai leidėjai iki galo neišnaudoja pasaulinėje leidybos praktikoje jau įsitvirtinusių ir plačiai paplitusių, kartais net ir nemokamų elektroninės leidybos paslaugų. Reikšminiai žodžiai: elektroninė leidyba, mokslo publikacijos, institucinė talpykla, Doi, PURL. First published online: 29 May 2009

Case-Based Reasoning for Construction Hazard Identification: Case Representation and Retrieval

This paper proposes a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach to construction hazard identification that facilitates systematic feedback of past knowledge in the form of incident cases and hazard identification. This paper focuses on two of the key components of the CBR approach: (1) a detailed knowledge representation scheme, developed based on the modified loss causation model, to codify incident cases and past hazard identification and (2) an intelligent retrieval mechanism that can automatically retrieve relevant past cases. The detailed knowledge representation scheme presented herein is designed to model both incident cases and hazard identification so that both types of knowledge repository can be retrieved simultaneously and adapted for use. The scheme also includes a linguistic structure used to facilitate indexing of cases. The retrieval mechanism is based on the concept of similarity scoring. In this paper, a novel scoring technique based on semantic networks is presented. A case study is presented to demonstrate and validate the proposed approach.

Mixed-Integer Programming for QoS-Based Web Service Matchmaking

QoS-based Web service (WS) discovery has been recognized as the main solution for filtering and selecting between functionally equivalent WSs stored in registries or other types of repositories. There are two main techniques for QoS-based WS matchmaking (filtering): ontology-based and constraint programming (CP)-based. Unfortunately, the first technique is not efficient as it is based on the rather immature technology of ontology reasoning, while the second one is not accurate as it is based on syntactic QoS-based descriptions and faulty matchmaking metrics. In our previous work, we have developed an extensible and rich ontology language for QoS-based WS description. Moreover, we have devised a semantic alignment algorithm for aligning QoS-based WS descriptions so as to increase the accuracy of QoS-based WS matchmaking algorithms. Finally, we have developed two alternative CP-based QoS-based WS matchmaking algorithms: a unary-constrained and n-ary-constrained one. In this paper, we claim that mixed-integer programming (MIP) should be used as a matchmaking technique instead of CP and we provide experimental results proving it. In addition, we analyze and experimentally evaluate our matchmaking algorithms against a competing techniques one in order to demonstrate their efficiency and accuracy.

Afinal, o que é biblioteca digital?

Começando na década passada, a idéia de biblioteca digital, tal qual genericamente imaginamos, tem se transformado no paradigma reiterado dos sistemas e serviços bibliotecários. Desde então, um número impressionante de iniciativas, que incluem produtos e serviços de informação digital, infra-estrutura técnica, normativa e comercial, consórcios em escala global, tem sido continuamente desenvolvido em torno dessa idéia.

Comparing Repository Types: Challenges and Barriers for Subject-Based Repositories, Research Repositories, National Repository Systems and Institutional Repositories in Serving Scholarly Communication

After two decades of repository development, some conclusions may be drawn as to which type of repository and what kind of service best supports digital scholarly communication, and thus the production of new knowledge. Four types of publication repository may be distinguished, namely the subject-based repository, research repository, national repository system and institutional repository. Two important shifts in the role of repositories may be noted. With regard to content, a well-defined and high quality corpus is essential. This implies that repository services are likely to be most successful when constructed with the user and reader uppermost in mind. With regard to service, high value to specific scholarly communities is essential. This implies that repositories are likely to be most useful to scholars when they offer dedicated services supporting the production of new knowledge. Along these lines, challenges and barriers to repository development may be identified in three key dimensions: a) identification and deposit of content; b) access and use of services; and c) preservation of content and sustainability of service. An indicative comparison of challenges and barriers in some major world regions such as Europe, North America and East Asia plus Australia is offered in conclusion.

Results from an International Simulation Study on Coupled Thermal, Hydrological, and Mechanical Processes near Geological Nuclear Waste Repositories

As part of the ongoing international DECOVALEX project, four research teams used five different models to simulate coupled thermal, hydrological, and mechanical (THM) processes near waste emplacement drifts of geological nuclear waste repositories. The simulations were conducted for two generic repository types, one with open and the other with back-filled repository drifts, under higher and lower postclosure temperatures, respectively. In the completed first model inception phase of the project, a good agreement was achieved between the research teams in calculating THM responses for both repository types, although some disagreement in hydrological responses is currently being resolved. In particular, good agreement in the basic thermal-mechanical responses was achieved for both repository types, even though some teams used relatively simplified thermal-elastic heat-conduction models that neglected complex near-field thermal-hydrological processes. The good agreement between the complex and simplified process models indicates that the basic thermal-mechanical responses can be predicted with a relatively high confidence level.

Analysis of academic attitudes and existing processes to inform the design of teaching and learning material repositories

The last couple of years have brought a rise in the number of institutional repositories throughout the world and within UK Higher Education institutions, with the majority of these repositories being devoted to research output. Repositories containing teaching and learning material are less common and the workflows and business processes surrounding these types of repositories were unclear. The user motivations to contributing to and downloading from repositories were also unknown. This article reports on two studies: a wide-scale survey carried out with HE staff to identify barriers and incentives to contributing to teaching material repositories; and interviews carried out as part of a workflow study at Loughborough University, to identify existing practice in the creation and sharing of teaching material. Confusion is reported with regard to the difference between a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and a repository. However, many different purposes of a teaching and learning material repository are highlighted. This article discusses how repositories could successfully interoperate with other institutional applications and highlights the benefits of teaching material repositories to the user, through scenarios. Recommendations relating to the key aspects of the design and implementation of a repository service are outlined.