DigitalCommons@UConn Pay to Play: DigitalCommons@UConn Jonathan Nabe University of Connecticut June 12, 2006 Biomedical and Life Sciences Division, SLA

ProQuest’s DigitalCommons OUR DECISION LIMITED $ AND STAFFING HOSTED SOLUTION LIMITED OPTIONS ProQuest’s DigitalCommons One year pilot 2005-06 Full implementation, 2006

WHAT WE LIKED ABOUT DIGITALCOMMONS HOSTED LITTLE TECHNICAL DEMANDS ON OUR END PARTNERSHIP WITH BEPRESS PROQUEST’S ASSETS AND ECONOMIES OF SCALE

SETUP Practically instantaneous Five minutes and no technological demands since

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE, PART 1: FRONT END Branding Design and layout Expandable Organization

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE, PART 2: BACK END Submission process: Direct vs. Indirect Metadata fields Assign documents to multiple series Help pages within submission process

Some Features Accepts all file types Automatic conversion to pdf OAI-compliant Thesauri picklists Retain rights XML Gateway for federated searching Peer review and e-journal publishing Fulltext searching Access control

THE GOOD… IR IN A DAY! (And it works) Training – by phone, onsite, web conferencing Web forum – to share experiences & advice Good support – less than 24 hours for most requests Enhancements added seamlessly

DC ENHANCEMENTS since the beginning of our pilot Referral use data RSS Feeds LDAP Authentication Personal Researcher Pages “Claim Your Paper” feature Supports Handle System ISI indexing in Science Web Citation Index

THE BAD… $$$ for startup Support materials lacking New features regularly but not on demand Proprietary programming language

AND THE UGLY

YOURS OR THEIRS? IS YOUR TECH DEPARTMENT UNDERWORKED? CAN IT MATCH WHAT PQ PROVIDES? Daily backups Weekly off-site backups Failover server at second ISP? Quarterly archive FTP’d Dedicated personnel Track record of reliability