The Stellar Open Archive roadmap

From Stellar Deliverable 6.1

The STELLAR OA will be launched at M6. We present here the main elements of the roadmap which will structure the task during the coming 12 months.

This open archive is prototyping what will become the TeLearn OA by including several functionalities and services supporting the emergence of Science 2.0 practices in the TEL research area. Original developments are specified and will be implemented along the project for this purpose (but already attaching blogs and forums to publication is a step in this direction). Another critical action to be engaged by the OA task in WP6 is to leverage the awareness of the community about the benefit and efficiency of adopting open access and developing Science 2.0 based strategies to enhance research. This evolution is in line with the general evolution of scientific research and the involvement of Europe in the Open Archive movement.

1 Bootstrapping the SOA

The SOA will be a subset of the TeLearn Open Archive with its own direct access. This will be obtained by the creation of a Stellar stamp. This stamp will be used to label the so-called "Stellar publications", that is the publications of the researchers members of Stellar.

Rational --> the SOA is an image of the Stellar competence and excellence, not a set of the publications supported by the Stellar grant (Stellar is a NoE not a research project)

Action --> affiliate each Stellar contractor to Telearn

Action --> establish the list of the individual participants for each contractor

Action --> stamp the publications of which an author is on a list provided by a contractor

Comment --> each contributor will be informed and have the possibility to refuse the stamp

Comment --> a helpdesk (openarchive@stellarnet.eu) will provide a SOA support (a note will be sent)

This picture summarizes the reponses to the question : « who should upload information of the OA ?”. Then, means will be searched for so that a specific and concrete support can be provided to users to initiate their use of the Stellar OA. We need to take into account that a significant number of them will be reluctant to do themselves the basic work needed to upload information.

2 Stellar OA evangelism

The key point when developing an OA is to ensure that each potential contributor understand the benefit and gets a correct picture of the constraints. The task support group will provide a short user manual, pointers to the relevant resources to inform the users.

Rational --> ensure a correct understanding of the copyright issues, and of the type of material which can and should be uploaded on SOA (documents, links to documents, bibliographical notes)

Action --> dissemination of a SOA presentation, use, functionalities, scientific stake of the OA

Action --> dissemination of information about copyright issues and best practice

Action --> establishing a group of facilitators (one support person by contractor and one by WP)

Action --> presentation of the SOA at the Science 2.0 workshop at EC-TEL 2009

Action --> establishing a common strategy with each WP, esp. targeting stakeholders

3 Stellar OA first release

The first release of the SOA will take the form of a window on the SOA subset of Telearn with a set of functionalities allowing to upload, download, search for, retrieve items stored in the OA. The release will provide access to documents, but also video, software and other possible material relevant to share (e.g. data)

Action --> Specification of the SOA website, executive green light on look and feel

Action --> creation of a specific URL for the SOA website

Action --> Creation of the SOA RSS feed for use in the mashup

Stellar OA first release at M6