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    <Identifier>mbi000137</Identifier>
    <IdentifierDoi>10.3205/mbi000137</IdentifierDoi>
    <IdentifierUrn>urn:nbn:de:0183-mbi0001372</IdentifierUrn>
    <ArticleType>Original Contribution</ArticleType>
    <TitleGroup>
      <Title language="en">The management of an international open access repository: the case of E-LIS</Title>
      <TitleTranslated language="de">Management eines internationalen Open Access-Archivs: das Beispiel E-LIS</TitleTranslated>
    </TitleGroup>
    <CreatorList>
      <Creator>
        <PersonNames>
          <Lastname>De Robbio</Lastname>
          <LastnameHeading>De Robbio</LastnameHeading>
          <Firstname>Antonella</Firstname>
          <Initials>A</Initials>
        </PersonNames>
        <Address>Universit&#224; degli Studi di Padova - Center for University Libraries Via Anghinoni 3, 35121 Padua, Italy<Affiliation>Member of the E-LIS administrative board; Universit&#224; degli Studi di Padova - Center for University Libraries, Padua, Italy</Affiliation></Address>
        <Email>antonella.derobbio&#64;unipd.it</Email>
        <Creatorrole corresponding="yes" presenting="no">author</Creatorrole>
      </Creator>
      <Creator>
        <PersonNames>
          <Lastname>Katzmayr</Lastname>
          <LastnameHeading>Katzmayr</LastnameHeading>
          <Firstname>Michael</Firstname>
          <Initials>M</Initials>
        </PersonNames>
        <Address>WU Vienna University of Economics and Business - University Library, Augasse 2-6, 1090 Vienna, Austria<Affiliation>E-LIS editor for Austria; WU Vienna University of Economics and Business - University Library, Vienna, Austria</Affiliation></Address>
        <Email>michael.katzmayr&#64;wu-wien.ac.at</Email>
        <Creatorrole corresponding="no" presenting="no">author</Creatorrole>
      </Creator>
    </CreatorList>
    <PublisherList>
      <Publisher>
        <Corporation>
          <Corporatename>German Medical Science GMS Publishing House</Corporatename>
        </Corporation>
        <Address>D&#252;sseldorf</Address>
      </Publisher>
    </PublisherList>
    <SubjectGroup>
      <SubjectheadingDDB>610</SubjectheadingDDB>
      <Keyword language="en">open access</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="en">subject repository</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="en">library and information science</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="en">organization</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="en">policies</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="de">Open Access</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="de">thematisches Archiv</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="de">Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="de">Organisation</Keyword>
      <Keyword language="de">Richtlinien</Keyword>
    </SubjectGroup>
    <DatePublishedList>
      <DatePublished>20090616</DatePublished>
    </DatePublishedList>
    <Language>engl</Language>
    <SourceGroup>
      <Journal>
        <ISSN>1865-066X</ISSN>
        <Volume>9</Volume>
        <Issue>1</Issue>
        <JournalTitle>GMS Medizin - Bibliothek - Information</JournalTitle>
        <JournalTitleAbbr>GMS Med Bibl Inf</JournalTitleAbbr>
        <IssueTitle>Green Road to Open Access - Institutionelle und fachliche Repositorien</IssueTitle>
      </Journal>
    </SourceGroup>
    <ArticleNo>09</ArticleNo>
  </MetaData>
  <OrigData>
    <Abstract language="de" linked="yes">
      <Pgraph>E-LIS ist das gr&#246;&#223;te Open Access-Archiv f&#252;r das Bibliotheks-, Informations- und Dokumentationswesen und wird von einem internationalen Team aus dem Bibliotheks- und Informationswesen ehrenamtlich betrieben. Mit April 2009 sind rund 9000 Dokumente im Volltext von &#252;ber 5600 AutorInnen aus 90 L&#228;ndern in 37 Sprachen verzeichnet. Neben dem Anbieten von Services f&#252;r AutorInnen und Fach- und Berufsverb&#228;nden ist das Management bez&#252;glich der Grundlagen und Richtlinien von besonderer Bedeutung. E-LIS hat sich deshalb unter anderem einem entsprechenden Audit unterzogen und bem&#252;ht sich um eine standardisierte Kommunikation der Richtlinien und Grunds&#228;tze.</Pgraph>
    </Abstract>
    <Abstract language="en" linked="yes">
      <Pgraph>E-LIS is the largest open access repository in the field of library and information science and is maintained voluntarily by an international team of librarians and information professionals. As from April 2009, it contains at about 9000 full text documents in 37 languages from more than 5600 authors from 90 countries. Additionally to the provision of services to authors and associations in the field, the management of policy issues is crucial for the repository administration. Thus E-LIS has, inter alia, completed a policy audit and intends to formulate and communicate its policies in a standardized way. </Pgraph>
    </Abstract>
    <TextBlock linked="yes" name="Introduction">
      <MainHeadline>Introduction</MainHeadline>
      <Pgraph>The open access (OA) movement is probably the most prominent and promising approach to achieve a sustainable, alternative system for scholarly communication. In the narrower sense OA refers to scholarly, peer reviewed literature that is made freely available on the Internet. In the broader sense it means providing free access to all scholarly and academic material, including presentations at conferences, datasets, theses, books, etc. Apart from the publication in OA journals, the depositing of scholarly materials in OA repositories by the authors (self archiving) or on behalf of them (mediated archiving) is a basic strategy to achieve OA. Whereas institutional repositories contain the intellectual output of one or more institutions or institutional units, subject or disciplinary repositories include documents from authors from around the world covering one or more subjects <TextLink reference="1"></TextLink>.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>In the following article we exemplify the management <TextGroup><PlainText>of a centralized</PlainText></TextGroup> disciplinary repository by E-LIS (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;eprints.rclis.org">http:&#47;&#47;eprints.rclis.org</Hyperlink>). Because general information on E-LIS has already been given in the relevant literature <TextLink reference="2"></TextLink>, <TextLink reference="3"></TextLink> we concentrate on recent efforts and developments. First we present an up-to-date snapshot of the content deposited in E-LIS. Following that we illustrate the organizational model of E-LIS. Next we show how authors, publishers and professional or academic associations in the field of library and information science (LIS) can use E-LIS for their purposes. Finally, we address some issues concerning policy management that are important for a successful repository administration.</Pgraph>
    </TextBlock>
    <TextBlock linked="yes" name="E-LIS: disciplinary repository for library and information science">
      <MainHeadline>E-LIS: disciplinary repository for library and information science</MainHeadline>
      <Pgraph>E-LIS is an abbreviation for E-prints in Library and Information Science. It is a centralized disciplinary repository, was established 2003, and is the world&#39;s largest open archive in the field of librarianship, information science and technology, and related disciplines. In its beginning it was partly funded by the <Mark2>Spanish Ministry of Culture</Mark2>, and it is hosted by the <Mark2>AEPIC</Mark2> team on servers of the I<Mark2>talian Consorzio Interuniversitario Lombardo per Elaborazione Automatica (CILEA)</Mark2>. E-LIS is part of the <Mark2>Research in Computing, Library and Information Science (RCLIS)</Mark2> project, an international effort to organize and disseminate scholarly papers in librarianship and related fields. The applied software is GNU Eprints version 3.1.2.1.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>E-LIS accepts any scholarly or technical document, published or unpublished, that is relevant to LIS and has the form of a finished document that is ready to enter into a process of communication. This results in a broad coverage both in terms of content and types of submitted material.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>As of April 14, 2009, E-LIS contains 9025 documents. For the last 12 months the growth rate of the repository has been at about 2&#37; or 140 documents per month. The steadily growing number of documents shows that E-LIS has achieved a sustainable acceptance in the LIS community.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The invisibility of scholarship from so called developing countries is regarded as a major problem in the academic community. Thanks to the existence of networked services of digital OA repositories, scholars from these countries can access relevant knowledge via these services and in turn have the opportunity to disseminate their documents to their global academic communities at practically no cost. Accordingly, the mission of E-LIS is to serve the international LIS community and provide a place where all authors can deposit their documents and contribute to the worldwide dissemination of knowledge. Authors who deposit their documents in open archives, such as E-LIS, are participating in a global endeavor by universities, researchers, libraries, (some) publishers, editors and readers to redefine and eventually transform the mechanisms of scholarly communication. In E-LIS, more than 5900 users from 90 countries have been depositing documents in 37 languages. Table 1 <ImgLink imgNo="1" imgType="table"/> and Table 2 <ImgLink imgNo="2" imgType="table"/> show the outstanding international contribution to E-LIS.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The documents in E-LIS are not only scholarly papers before and after peer-review (so called preprints or postprints), but also conference papers, conference posters, presentations, books, book chapters, technical reports, working papers, theses, newspaper and magazine articles, etc. All in all, more than 20 document types are available in E-LIS. Table 3 <ImgLink imgNo="3" imgType="table"/> shows the distribution of documents to the top 5 document types and indicates how many of them have undergone peer-review.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Among all documents deposited in E-LIS, about 54&#37; are marked as peer-reviewed. This means that roughly half of the documents are OA literature in the narrower sense of the meaning. The high number of non peer-reviewed documents is founded on the fact that E-LIS not only serves LIS scholars in the field, but also librarians and other information professionals. The latter often deposit and use document types that are by nature not subject to peer-review, e.g. tutorials, reports, library instruction materials, etc. However, when searching E-LIS it is possible to limit to a desired subset of documents, e.g. peer-reviewed articles in a certain language.</Pgraph>
    </TextBlock>
    <TextBlock linked="yes" name="Organization of E-LIS">
      <MainHeadline>Organization of E-LIS</MainHeadline>
      <Pgraph>Since its beginning, E-LIS has been organized, managed and maintained by an international team of librarians and information professionals with different vocational and educational backgrounds. The organization of E-LIS relies on voluntary work; however, coordinating volunteers without having a clear organizational structure and defined policies is like herding cats. Therefore, E-LIS has an elaborated organizational structure that is made up of three sections.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The administrative section consists of the administrative board (8 members) which is responsible for the overall policy and organizational development. The administrative board comprises the following roles or functions: the chief executive who is the representative of E-LIS, the coordinator of the editors who appoints all country and regional editors, and the chair of the technical board that appoints and removes members from the technical board provided that at least 2 in 3 of the existing members express agreement with the appointment or dismissal. The chair of the administrative board appoints and removes members from the administrative board, provided that at least 2 in 3 of the existing members express agreement with the appointment or dismissal. The administrative board can dismiss and replace the chair by another person among its members by majority vote. </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The second section consists of 67 editors from 40 countries; the maximum number of editors per country is three. The editors&#8217; main task is to approve the documents deposited in E-LIS in terms of metadata quality. The group of editors is also the forum where important policy issues are discussed and democratically agreed upon. Moreover, the editors have the duty of promoting E-LIS in their countries and keeping close contact with local LIS communities, relevant academic institutions, and authors. 4 regional editors support the country editors in the approval process. They supervise the quality of the metadata approved by the editors and support the collaboration of editors in case of cross-country or regional projects.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The third section is the technical board (4 members) that concentrates on the software &#8211; its implementation, the development of added value functionalities, and its operation within the OAI framework. The technical board can dismiss its chair and replace it by another person among its members by majority vote. Figure 1 <ImgLink imgNo="1" imgType="figure"/> shows the functional organizational structure of E-LIS.</Pgraph>
    </TextBlock>
    <TextBlock linked="yes" name="Benefits for authors">
      <MainHeadline>Benefits for authors</MainHeadline>
      <Pgraph>Providing the right services for authors and publishers is a vital part of repository management. So, why should authors deposit their full texts in E-LIS&#63; There are basically two major benefits: the worldwide dissemination of papers and detailed usage statistics for each document. </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The main purpose of E-LIS is to give authors in the <TextGroup><PlainText>LIS community</PlainText></TextGroup> the opportunity to self archive their <TextGroup><PlainText>papers and</PlainText></TextGroup> to disseminate them as widely as possible via the Internet. E-LIS achieves this by being part of the so called <Mark2>Open Archive Initiat</Mark2>ive (OAI) (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;www.openarchives.org">http:&#47;&#47;www.openarchives.org</Hyperlink>). The OAI architecture contains two functional roles: <Mark2>data provider</Mark2> and <Mark2>service provider</Mark2>. A data provider, such as E-LIS, maintains one or more repositories, and the information objects in these repositories (e.g. full texts) are described with structured metadata (e.g. citation records). Service providers harvest the metadata (mostly in Dublin Core format) from several data providers according to the protocol <Mark2>OAI-PMH</Mark2> (OAI <Mark2>Protocol for Metadata Harvesting</Mark2>), a set of request and responses carried over HTTP. The service providers offer a search-and-retrieval interface that allows users to search metadata records from various data providers. The metadata records in the service providers contain a hyperlink to the information object in the corresponding data provider. The value of service providers lies in the aggregation of data: end-users do not have to search the relevant repositories individually, but now can rely on one resource to search information within their relevant discipline <TextLink reference="4"></TextLink>. </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Service providers can either be general or discipline specific. Some prominent general service providers are <Mark2>OAIster</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;www.oaister.org">http:&#47;&#47;www.oaister.org</Hyperlink>), <Mark2>BASE &#8211; Bielefeld Academic Search Engine</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;base.ub.uni-bielefeld.de">http:&#47;&#47;base.ub.uni-bielefeld.de</Hyperlink>), <Mark2>Scientific Commons</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;en.scientificcommons.org">http:&#47;&#47;en.scientificcommons.org</Hyperlink>) or <Mark2>Scirus</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;www.scirus.com">http:&#47;&#47;www.scirus.com</Hyperlink>). The discipline specific service provider in the field of LIS is <Mark2>DL-Harvest</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;dlharvest.sir.arizona.edu">http:&#47;&#47;dlharvest.sir.arizona.edu</Hyperlink>) that harvests metadata from 14 repositories that are dedicated fully or partly to LIS <TextLink reference="5"></TextLink>. E-LIS is harvested by all of these service providers; this means that all documents in E-LIS can also be found easily via several other academic databases on the Internet.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Additionally to the metadata harvesting by service providers, all records and &#8211; if technically possible &#8211; full texts in data providers are indexed by Internet search engines. Academic search engines like <Mark2>Google Scholar</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;scholar.google.com">http:&#47;&#47;scholar.google.com</Hyperlink>) explicitly direct their robots to registered institutional or subject OA repositories. Due to the fact that individual homepages of researchers are often ignored by academic search engines, putting documents somewhere on the Internet is only half way there. In order to disseminate full texts as widely as possible and make them visible to OAI service providers and academic search engines, authors should deposit their documents in OA repositories. Moreover, these repositories provide a stable and persistent URL for citation purposes.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Another advantage for authors is the availability of detailed usage statistics that provide monthly document and abstract views broken down by country. While the characteristics of the OAI architecture benefit all OAI compliant repositories, the availability of detailed usage statistics is a feature developed by the technical staff of E-LIS. Figure 2 <ImgLink imgNo="2" imgType="figure"/> shows the usage statistics for an item in German language deposited in November 2008.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>In addition, E-LIS tries to keep pace with the evolving requirements of authors and repository users. Due to the recent migration to Eprints version 3 users have gained advantage from new features, e.g.: </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>
        <UnorderedList>
          <ListItem level="1">it is possible to download the metadata of records in various formats like BiBTex, RefMan RIS (for EndNote, Reference Manager), etc., and</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">authors can define an embargo period for their documents. This means that the full-text of such documents can be used only after a defined period due to copyright agreements with publishers. However, the citation will be provided immediately after depositing. </ListItem>
        </UnorderedList>
      </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Improvements and add-ons related to multimedia content and Web 2.0 functionalities are goals of further developments.</Pgraph>
    </TextBlock>
    <TextBlock linked="yes" name="Benefits for LIS publishers and associations">
      <MainHeadline>Benefits for LIS publishers and associations</MainHeadline>
      <Pgraph>Not-for-profit publishers of LIS journals can use E-LIS as a platform for the secondary publication of their content. For example, all articles published in <Mark2>ACIMED</Mark2>, a Cuban journal dedicated to medical information and librarianship published by the <Mark2>National Center for Scientific Research</Mark2>, have been deposited in E-LIS from the first issue in 1993 up to now. </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Professional or academic associations that organize conferences and publish conference proceedings can make a similar use of E-LIS. This can be exemplified by the complete inclusion of conference papers of the <Mark2>Pan-Hellenic Conferences of Greek Academic Libraries</Mark2>: due to a cooperation of the <Mark2>University of Cyprus Library</Mark2> (which had created a digital database with the proceedings) with Greek and Cypriot E-LIS editors it was possible to transfer more than 200 records with full-texts into E-LIS, and it is planned to continue this collaboration.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>These two representative examples show how publishers and associations can communicate and promote their efforts in a highly effective and cost-efficient way. In general, such cooperations work best with mediated archiving, because it is easier to achieve a high metadata quality, e.g., when entering multipart names of conference proceedings. Moreover, mediated archiving is also a special service to the authors. If publishers or associations need assistance with mediated archiving, the country editors of E-LIS will give support or hand the issue over to the technical team (in case of bulk deposits). It is recommended that the publishers or associations obtain the right to store the conference papers, presentations, book chapters, articles, etc. in E-LIS from the authors in advance. In order to avoid conflicts, an opt-out policy should exist for those authors who do not want to share their documents open access. </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Currently, E-LIS collaborates with the following institutions and associations:</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>
        <UnorderedList>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>AAB &#8211; Andalusian Librarians Association </Mark2>(Spain)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>AHDI &#8211; Asociaci&#243;n Hispana de Documentalistas en Internet </Mark2>(Spanish speaking world)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>AIDA - Italian Association for Advanced Documentation </Mark2>(Italy)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>AVEI &#8211; Associaci&#243; Valenciana d&#39;Especialistes en Infor</Mark2><Mark2></Mark2><Mark2>maci&#243; </Mark2>(Spain)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde </Mark2>(United Kingdom)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>CNBA &#8211; Coordinamento Nazionale Biblioteche Architettura </Mark2>(Italy)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>CNIC &#8211; National Center for Scientific Research </Mark2>(Cuba)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>IBICT &#8211; Brazilian Institute on Science and Technology </Mark2>(Brazil)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>Polish Librarian Association </Mark2>(Poland)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>SEDIC &#8211; Spanish Society of Documentation and Scientific Information </Mark2>(Spain)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>TLA &#8211; Turkish Librarians Association </Mark2>(Turkey)</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>UNAK &#8211; University and Research Librarians Association </Mark2>(Turkey) </ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1"><Mark2>Universidad Polit&#233;cnica de Valencia</Mark2>  (Spain)</ListItem>
        </UnorderedList>
      </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>New partners are always welcome. Institutions or associations interested in a cooperation are invited to contact the responsible country editor. </Pgraph>
    </TextBlock>
    <TextBlock linked="yes" name="Policy management">
      <MainHeadline>Policy management</MainHeadline>
      <Pgraph>Additionally to an appropriate organizational structure, clear and defined policies are a prerequisite for successfully running a repository. There are various challenges in everyday repository management that require clear policies, e.g.:</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>
        <UnorderedList>
          <ListItem level="1">an author wants to withdraw one or more full texts,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">an author suggests fundamental changes in metadata or wants to modify the full text,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">an author deposits a paper that seems to be questionable in terms of content,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">a publisher contacts the repository in terms of copyright infringement,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">a library association intends to archive the proceedings of its conferences in the repository, but wonders if long term digital preservation of the full texts will be guaranteed.</ListItem>
        </UnorderedList>
      </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Many E-LIS editors have already been confronted with one or more of these issues. Experience in the repository community has shown: the more detailed and specific the policies, the easier such issues can be handled. Policies should be clear and binding, but they never can be seen as carved in stone. They have to keep pace and evolve with changes in the repository environment. Due to this E-LIS has been engaged in three policy related activities: policy self assessment using the DRAMBORA audit scheme, reflection of its preservation management, and formulating and communicating its policies in a standardized and structured way.</Pgraph>
      <SubHeadline>Policy self-assessment</SubHeadline>
      <Pgraph>In 2007 E-LIS completed the <Mark2>DRAMBORA</Mark2> audit (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;www.repositoryaudit.eu">http:&#47;&#47;www.repositoryaudit.eu</Hyperlink>). DRAMBORA (Digital Repository Audit Method Based On Risk Assessment) can be implemented as self-assessment and covers all kinds of activities that are likely to have an impact on digital objects, e.g. missions and objectives of the repository, organizational issues, technical means, staff, funding, etc. The DRAMBORA audit facilitates <TextLink reference="6"></TextLink>: </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>
        <UnorderedList>
          <ListItem level="1">documentation of organizational and regulatory frameworks,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">identification of activities, assets and their owners,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">identification and assessment of risks associated with managing digital information,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">management of risks to ensure business continuity and future use of information.</ListItem>
        </UnorderedList>
      </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The 10 core requirements are <TextLink reference="6"></TextLink>: </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>
        <UnorderedList>
          <ListItem level="1">mandate and commitment to digital object maintenance,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">organizational fitness,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">legal and regulatory legitimacy,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">efficient and effective policies,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">adequate technical infrastructure,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">acquisition and ingest,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">preservation of digital object integrity, authenticity and usability,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">metadata management and audit trails,</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">dissemination, and</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">preservation planning and action.</ListItem>
        </UnorderedList>
      </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>E-LIS has been an early adopter of the DRAMBORA audit. In a nutshell, the result was that E-LIS in general seems to be well prepared; however, some shortcomings were discovered, e.g. the documentation of procedures, technical routines, and preservation issues could be improved. Accordingly, the main advantages of completing the audit process were a detailed reflection on the policies, to get information which further documentation is needed, and obtaining an understanding of the severity of various risks that constitute a risk-ranking. </Pgraph>
      <SubHeadline>Preservation management</SubHeadline>
      <Pgraph>Preservation issues are of growing importance in the repository community. With regard to E-LIS, it is rather a <Mark2>presentation</Mark2> than a <Mark2>preservation repository</Mark2>. It therefore primarily aims at the broad and quick dissemination of LIS materials. However, keeping abreast of preservation issues and complying with conventional preservation practices and standards is a must for all OA repositories. To date, most of the repositories, including E-LIS, have no formal preservation policy, except of the recommendation of file formats that are likely to facilitate long-term preservation. The first step in defining a preservation strategy is to identify the file formats of the information objects in the repository, because an accurate knowledge of file formats is a prerequisite for preservation planning and active preservation. Therefore E-LIS provides a profile that shows the breakdown of file formats contained in the repository that is provided in the context of the project <Mark2>Preserv</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;preserv.eprints.org">http:&#47;&#47;preserv.eprints.org</Hyperlink>) that aims at enabling long-term access to materials in repositories <TextLink reference="3"></TextLink>. The Preserv Profile is available within the <Mark2>Registry of Open Access Repositories ROAR</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;roar.eprints.org">http:&#47;&#47;roar.eprints.org</Hyperlink>) (Figure 3 <ImgLink imgNo="3" imgType="figure"/>).</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>This histogram shows that at about 86&#37; of the files are in one of the various PDF formats. At about 9&#37; of the files are already available in PDF&#47;A format (Portable Document Format &#8211; Archival (1)) that is considered as suitable for long-term preservation. Each bar in the histogram is a hyperlink to the list of the records that contain the defined file type.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The software used for E-LIS, EPrints v3, helps to support the preservation of digital objects by the means of various features that were jointly developed with the Preserv project. For example, the new history module of EPrints allows the recording of the history of changes to a repository object by updating its preservation metadata, i.e. the metadata designed for managing digital content over a long period of time.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>Although all types of files can be deposited in E-LIS, authors are recommended to deposit PDF or HTML files. Plain text files are also supported. Now that the types of materials in the repository are known and the applied software provides the relevant technical features, a preservation policy can be elaborated.</Pgraph>
      <SubHeadline>Policy communication</SubHeadline>
      <Pgraph>Not only the development of clear policies is important for repository management, but also the communication of the policies to users and other stakeholders. Thus E-LIS intends to define its policies in a standardized way in order to achieve more clarity for authors and repository staff. The Directory of Open Access Repositories <Mark2>OpenDOAR</Mark2> provides on its website an <Mark2>Policies Tool</Mark2> (<Hyperlink href="http:&#47;&#47;www.opendoar.org&#47;tools&#47;en&#47;policies.php">http:&#47;&#47;www.opendoar.org&#47;tools&#47;en&#47;policies.php</Hyperlink>) that helps repository administrators to formulate and communicate their policies <TextLink reference="7"></TextLink>. The tool recommends two types of policies:</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>
        <UnorderedList>
          <ListItem level="1">minimum options that allow the achieving of OA goals and</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">optimum options for refinements for more use or better quality.</ListItem>
        </UnorderedList>
      </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>The overall policy is made up of 5 specific policies:</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>
        <UnorderedList>
          <ListItem level="1">metadata policy for information describing items in the repository</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">data policy for full-text and other full data items</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">content policy for types of document and data set held</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">submission policy concerning depositors, quality and copyright</ListItem>
          <ListItem level="1">preservation policy</ListItem>
        </UnorderedList>
      </Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>In the time of writing this article, the administration of E-LIS is defining its policy using this tool.</Pgraph>
    </TextBlock>
    <TextBlock linked="yes" name="Conclusion">
      <MainHeadline>Conclusion</MainHeadline>
      <Pgraph>The development of E-LIS, especially the steadily growing number of deposits, shows that this repository is on the right track. Therefore, E-LIS is not only a successful disciplinary archive for the LIS community, but also can act as a model for other communities or disciplines that want to set up a centralized disciplinary OA repository. Moreover, the organizational model is an example of a very effective global collaboration.</Pgraph>
      <Pgraph>However, this does not mean that the E-LIS team can rest on its laurels. A repository is a growing and evolving organism and has to adapt to the changing repository environment and user requirements. Especially, the policy development is of importance &#8211; defining, revising and communicating policies are a key issue in the management of repositories.</Pgraph>
    </TextBlock>
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              <Mark1>Table 1: Top 10 languages in E-LIS (data retrieved on April 14, 2009)</Mark1>
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              <Mark1>Table 2: Top 10 contributing countries to E-LIS (data retrieved on April 14, 2009)</Mark1>
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              <Mark1>Table 3: Top 5 document types in E-LIS (data retrieved on April 14, 2009)</Mark1>
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              <Mark1>Figure 1: Functional organization chart of E-LIS</Mark1>
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              <Mark1>Figure 2: Example of detailed data for document usage</Mark1>
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              <Mark1>Figure 3: Preserv Profile of E-LIS (profile retrieved on April 16, 2009)</Mark1>
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