by Lynn and Jerry

In the past, physical copies of data, articles and technical reports published at SIO were collected through the SIO Publications Committee (a sub-committee of the SIO Staff Council), given a SIO Reference Series publication number, and listed in an annually published hardcopy bibliography. This centralized system broadened community awareness of research and provided a common location for all publications independent of the scientist or lab involved in the research. Institutional support for this program ended in 2002, and with the retirement of Kitty Kuhns, the annual bibliographies ended.

Today, as demand for access to articles and data is growing, the need for a centralized, stable and accessible repository has re-emerged with some new obstacles. The web has provided the needed centralized space of which many researchers and groups have taken advantage. However, with constantly shifting URLs, servers, and funding cycles, maintaining these local access points is a laborious and frustrating task.

To fill the need, the SIO Library has assumed the local responsibility to maintain an online archive and repository called the e-scholarship Repository . This is a free service provided by a partnership between the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) and the non-profit California Digital Library(CDL). An author can submit a published paper in PDF format to the e-scholarship system through an email to siolib@sio.ucsd.edu, an email alias provided by Peter Brueggeman, Director of the SIO Library. The paper will be posted under the appropriate headers (headers include: Tech Reports, SIO Reference, etc) and given a permanent URL. Data, photos, graphs, and other file types can be submitted as well, either independently or as an ‘associated file’ to a paper. Web URLs can be included, though as websites grow, shift and age, links commonly break and are discouraged unless realistically stable for the long-term.

SIO has a separate space in the e-scholarship Repository and allows further subdivision into ‘centers’ and ’series’. The OceanInformatics group for instance can request designation as a ‘center’ with all submissions falling under this hierarchical step. A center can have multiple series which group submissions by designated subjects.

All files in the repository are stored on the servers at the CDL. The CDL is responsible for moving files and maintaining the permanent URLs through server upgrades, etc.

A note about copyrights:

To post a published article as part of the SIO Repository, the lead author must be granted permission through the publishing house or agency. While many journals have denied copyright releases for online access, a few have begun to open up to the idea. Anecdotally, the Elsevier journals (including Continental Shelf Research, Progress in Oceanography and others) will grant authors permission to post their articles online. The research society journals (i.e., those published through the AMS, AGU, etc.) have tended to be less cooperative in this regard though AGU will consider allowing pre-prints to be posted. Authors should investigate any copyright restrictions before posting a published work, the SHERPA/ROMEO list is an excellent place to start.