An OpenDOAR milestone: LocalDOAR

OpenDOAR has an exciting announcement to make to the repository and open research community. Over the last few months the team have been working with Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII) in a record review exercise. For this, NII were given a temporary, local version of OpenDOAR, “NII LocalDOAR”, where they were able to freely edit and add new repository records to feed into OpenDOAR. With fantastic results and exciting future plans, NII LocalDOAR is without doubt an OpenDOAR milestone.

What is a LocalDOAR?

A LocalDOAR is essentially a clone of OpenDOAR aimed at repository consortia and networks. It would hold a collection of OpenDOAR’s repository records as agreed with the collaborating party. A LocalDOAR has its own administrative interface where the editorial permissions are assigned to approved users who can then edit existing records and/or create new ones. This gives the users full autonomy over the LocalDOAR data.  Once the users are satisfied with the records listed in their LocalDOAR following their review, the data would then be imported back into OpenDOAR providing us with records vetted by experts in the field in line with OpenDOAR’s eligibility criteria.

NII LocalDOAR

Banner from NII LocalDOAR website
NII LocalDOAR banner

NII LocalDOAR contained 726 records consisting of all existing Japanese repositories registered in OpenDOAR, along with new repository records at their request. NII then had full autonomy over the data and were able to review, amend and enrich their records. Once NII had completed their record review, we imported the updated and new data back into OpenDOAR. This resulted in a total of 683* updated and new repositories in OpenDOAR which is a fantastic result.

The benefits of the exercise were clear to us as soon as we saw the NII LocalDOAR’s data. To name a few of the key changes, NII ensured that where necessary:

  • each repository and organisation have both the Japanese and English versions of the names
  • repository names were updated
  • URLs were updated
  • content types were updated

As a result, OpenDOAR now holds this updated, high quality data.

What does LocalDOAR achieve?

Reflecting on LocalDOAR more broadly, the benefits are far reaching:

Widening community engagement

A key part of OpenDOAR’s mission is to publicly represent the global repository community.  LocalDOAR supports this principle by giving more power to the community by enabling them to be actively involved in the curation of the data.  A LocalDOAR can have multiple accounts which means teams can work together to review records at their own pace.

What’s more, to have the input of repository specialists who are in tune with their community’s needs is a powerful enabler in ensuring OpenDOAR is a rich and comprehensive directory.

Data integrity

Repositories are not static entities. They grow and change over time giving way to a wider variety of content types, new policy changes, software updates, and so on.  All of which can affect the information held in an OpenDOAR record.  LocalDOAR provides a secure and easy to use platform where specialist groups can carry out high-volume record audits on behalf of their communities. As a result, OpenDOAR benefits from this local, up to date intelligence.

Boosts multilingual presence

Based in the United Kingdom, the OpenDOAR editorial team process repository registrations from across the globe daily which means we often review websites in different languages.  It is important to us that we reflect the repository accurately in OpenDOAR which is why we have multilingual fields for repository and organisation names.  This allows us to capture the names in their original language(s) and, if available, the English form.  However, this is not always a straightforward process.  NII LocalDOAR has been a fantastic example of the benefits of enabling native speakers to edit records.  The repositories can be accurately portrayed in the relevant languages boosting their presence.

Where next?

NII LocalDOAR is only the beginning. Given the success of the recent work, plans are underway to roll out LocalDOAR as a service for repository networks and consortia. OpenDOAR is for the community which we want to empower by offering more autonomy and opportunity for involvement.

Finally, we want to thank NII for their involvement and valuable contribution throughout this exercise.

 

*Note that the difference between the record numbers 726 and 683 reflects the number of non-publicly visible records versus publicly visible records.  In OpenDOAR we store records that are both visible and not visible to the public to keep an audit trail.  A record may not be publicly visible for different reasons, for example the repository is no longer working, it may have been replaced, or is a duplicate of another record.  When we added all of Japan’s repositories to NII LocalDOAR, this included the full listing in OpenDOAR for NII to review. 

Get in touch!

Keep a look out for more updates in the future. In the meantime, if you would like to find out more about LocalDOAR, please get in touch with us via help@jisc.ac.uk.

Email us: help@jisc.ac.uk
Visit us: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar
Follow us: @OpenDOAR

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