Using DSpace, Biomed Central Launches Repository Service

-- Library Journal, 9/20/2004

Saying it is helping to meet the demand for open access voiced both in the UK Parliament’s STM Inquiry and in the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) recent proposal, open access publisher BioMed Central (BMC) announced the launch of a fee-based service to set up and maintain institutional repositories for colleges, universities, and research institutions. BMC officials said its Open Repository service will be based on DSpace software, the groundbreaking digital library system designed to capture, store, index, preserve, and redistribute the intellectual output of a university’s research faculty in digital formats. DSpace was built and released by MIT and Hewlett-Packard in 2002 and has grown steadily since its release.

DSpace is freely available under an open source license and has been adopted by a number of libraries, as part of a nascent “DSpace Federation.” Under its program, for a fee, BMC will “build, launch, maintain, and populate” repositories for institutions that could not otherwise afford to, or may lack the infrastructure or technical capacity in-house. Institutions can choose to pay a “one-off set-up fee,” to BMC, which will then build a repository to an institution’s requirements. They can hire BMC to maintain the repository or take over operation and maintenance themselves at any time. The institution remains the owner of the repository.