Merle Ruff

1

• Merle Ruff
• Sabinet

2

• Something new out of Africa
• A retrospective digitisation project focusing on
  exclusively African journals
• Putting African journals online

3

• Project Context
• Content Collection Criteria
• E-journal Metadata
• Our digital heritage

4

• To archive means to preserve and provide access
  to a collection of literature over time
• Archivesexist to preserve and protect the
  documentary record of human activity and to make
  it available for research, study, and evidentiary
  purposes

5

• Large retrospective online African journal
  collection currently unavailable
• Lack of funding for essential digitization
  projects to
• facilitate sharing of data and information
• preserve issues for posterity
• SA ePublications Requests from subscribers to
  extend the database to include retrospective
  issues.
• Carnegie Grant awarded to Sabinet Gateway over 4
  year period to establish the Archive.
• Web based full text archive of journal articles
• published in Africa about Africa
• integrated access to a significant body of
  untapped knowledge .

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• Published in Africa about Africa
• Retrospective back to first issue if avail.
• Peer reviewed accredited important
• Definition of broad subject areas
• Planned, ordered approach, not too rigid
• Establish uniqueness of collection avoid
  duplication with other archives.
• Achieve critical mass in each area

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• Social Sciences and Humanities
• Archaeology, Anthropology, History, Economics,
  Education, Law, Political Science, Sociology,
  Technology
• Sciences
• Agriculture, Botany, Biology, Mathematics,
  Medicine (Veterinary), Science
• Multi country focus
• General interdisciplinary works, African
  Affairs

8

• Complement rather than compete / duplicate online
  content
• Appropriate models and adopt standards based
  data structures for interoperability
• JSTOR (above-mentioned)
• AJOL (ongoing informal discussions, synergies,
  content focus)
• SaE publications (retrospective content hosted in
  Archive)
• Aluka (manuscript collection no journal
  content)
• DISA (struggle content)

9

• Standardised Scanning specifications / file
  formats / full text (TIFF, PDF)
• OCR (full text searching)
• Workflow (Create//import/metadata/ interface
  design, publish)
• Metadata !!!

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• Standards based (DC extended, MARC, JSTOR/ NLM
  journal dataset)
• Harvestable
• Controlled vocabularies
• Bibliography make citation information more
  available gtgt bibliographies and indexes
• Customisable user interface

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• E-journal data structure and metadata standards
• Widely adopted for interoperability and
  repurposing
• Enables cross linking JSTOR African Archive
• Expanding open access harvesting of ejournal
  metadata
• Archive supports metadata harvesting for
  discoverability with links to full text
  repository (access to full text by subscription)
• National system of harvesting content of
  institutional repositories (OAI-PMH metadata
  harvesting protocol)
• Adherence to protocol
• Identify entity for hosting a central metadata
  repository (WorldCat?)

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• Our Digital Archive
• Standardised / upgradable digitised content
• OCR and metadata to create a searchable,
  integrated and cross country archive of African
  journal literature
• Visibility
• Subscription based with preferential rates based
  on income ranking for high and low income
  countries
• Publishers have free access to their own material
  
• Hosting / Preservation
• Custodianship / hosting of the archive
• Preservation Portico / LOCKSS ?

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• Visibility
• International exposure/visibility for African
  researchers/authors work.
• Visibility leads to new subscriptions (Africa and
  internationally)
• Encourages comprehensive research into African
  scholarly work, both continentally and
  internationally.
• Accessibility
• Accessibility for contributors to their own
  research information.
• Access to an initial (and growing) set of
  high-quality collections as well as the
  opportunity to contribute their own scholarly
  materials
• Funding
• Better utilisation of publically funded research.
• Exposure for African research institutes thereby
  creating opportunities for future donor funding

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• Merle Ruff
• E-mail merle_at_sabinet.co.za
• Tel no 27 12 643-9500

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Collection Research

• Analysis of mostly peer reviewed titles (ISI,
  IBSS, DOE (identified 200 peer reviewed
  /frequently cited journals) analysis of
  categories
• User Survey (SA and Africa verify focus and
  recommend)
• Consulted Higher Education Institutes
• Review and analysis of journal titles on WorldCat
  exclusively from Africa and about Africa
• Evaluate Publisher participation requests
• Ongoing research and further refinement

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Building a Sustainable Resource

• Commitment to build a permanent and sustainable
  resource, that can be reliably accessed 24 hours
  a day, 365 days a year
• Not obsolete as soon as the next wave of
  technological innovations sweeps across the
  academic landscape (new hardware, software and
  file formats).
• Maintaining and upgrading a resource of this
  scale (hardware and software licensing)
• Significant expense of adding new content.
• Maintaining the moving wall
• Staffing (Project manager, publisher liaison,
  scanning and metadata analysis)

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ASSAFs Scholarly Publishing Programme

• Usage stats available for bibliometric assessment
  
• Consult approved list of SA Journals and Research
  reports
• Green route/ Institutional Repository (IR)
  developments
• Publication in traditional / commercial journals
  and then self archive on open access platform
• Provider may host content on different platforms
  (non exclusive rights)
• .