[Dspace-general] Two suggested features for next release of Dspace

[Stevan Harnad]

Hi Rob,

Can I make two suggestions for features that would be useful for the 
next release of Dspace?

    (1) The first you may have already: Can you have a separate tag
    for the depositor and for the author(s) of each deposited item,
    *together with the email addresses of each*?

There are many reasons why this will be useful, but a big one is the
second suggestion, below.

Every deposited dspace document presumably has a deposit field for
setting access privileges for the full-text, the three main ones being:

        (i) Open Access [ie, public access web-wide] 
        (ii) Restricted Access, Institution-Internal only 
        (iii) Restricted Access, author/depositor and Archive staff only.

Alongside the deposit field for the two Restricted Access fields (ii, iii), 
may I suggest that dspace add the following: 

         "Metadata will be visible web-wide and eprint-requesters will
         be able to send the author an automated email request."

That is the second suggested feature:

    (2) For every published paper that is in Restricted Access,
    a box should appear alongside the metadata, into which any
    eprint-requester can paste his name (optional) and email address
    (mandatory) if he wishes to receive an email of the eprints. The
    message is automatically sent to the *author* (not the depositor),
    who receives an email with a URL on which he can click to have his
    full-text automatically emailed to that requester.

This feature will be critically important in the next phase of institutional
self-archiving policy, in which immediate deposit will be mandatory but
access-setting will be left up to the author: 

    GENERIC MODEL FOR UNIVERSITY OPEN ACCESS SELF-ARCHIVING MANDATE
    http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html

For deposits that the author may elect to set as Restricted Access
for some period (e.g., if he wishes to abide by a journal's 6-month
embargo on public self-archiving -- a foolish move, on both sides,
but a contingency that will crop up for a while in the next phase),
the access-gap can be bridged meanwhile through this inconvenient and
indirect (but effective for OA) automated eprint email request-and-send
feature.

I hope this feature can be implemented quickly in dspace, as institutional
self-archiving policies will be drafted that are contingent on this
feature. 

Best wishes,

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html

Chaire de recherche du Canada           Professor of Cognitive Science    
Ctr. de neuroscience de la cognition    Dpt. Electronics & Computer Science
Université du Québec à Montréal         University of Southampton         
Montréal, Québec                        Highfield, Southampton
Canada  H3C 3P8                         SO17 1BJ United Kingdom
http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/                http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/