Creating the Flow: expanding the role of the Aquatic Commons presented by Stephanie C. Haas, Jan Heckman, and Lisa Raymond Presented at SAIL 2008 Panama, Republic of Panama April 14-16, 2008

Aquatic Commons Initiative is a model for digital resource sharing between stakeholders in the marine/aquatic information world. Its integrative architecture accommodates researchers and research institutions at all technological levels.

History of the Aquatic Commons Initiative 2005 The Aquatic Commons Initiative was introduced to the ASFA Board and IAMSLIC at the Rome meeting The Aquatic Commons Implementation Task Force was charge witH implementing the "Aquatic Commons." Task Force’s report was submitted in August Discussion and voting occurred at the annual meeting in Portland. IAMSLIC signed the contract for the development of an EPrints based repository with the Florida Center for Library Automation. Fred Merceur of IFREMER announced the development of the AVANO harvester. An Aquatic Commons Board appointed to oversee the development of the repository.

2007 Aquatic Commons repository is built on version 3 of EPrints. Goes live in August and deposits begin in September. AVANO out of IFREMER is designated as the official harvester for IAMSLIC. Google and OAIster also harvest records, and repository is registered at Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and OpenDOAR Directory of Open Access Repositories Web site is created off the IAMSLIC home page at ASFA Board allocates $ dollars to help build digital collections. Late 2007, three working groups are formed to help further the Aquatic Commons mission: Collection Development Working Group, Metadata Working Group, and a Tech Group.

2008 Recruitment of content begins Citation format display is modified for monographs Issuing agency is added as a “branding” field similar to communities in DSpace

Active contributors include: California Department of Fish and Game Fisheries Society of Nigeria Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Florida Geological Survey Florida Marine Research Laboratory Florida Sea Grant College Program International Collective in Support of Fishworkers National Fisheries Resources Research Centre, Uganda National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research, Nigeria Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific Oceanographic Engineering Program, Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida University of Botswana. Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre. United Nations Environment Programme. Mediterranean Action Plan

Deposits into AC (n=909 as of April 10, 2008)

Statistics December January ,919 unique IP addresses visited; an average 169 users per day 2,500 downloads TitleDownloads Checklists of Selected Shallow-Water Marine Invertebrates of Florida 413 Aquaculture Asia, vol. 9, no. 1, January - March Aquaculture Asia, Vol. 12, no. 2, April-June Florida's East Coast Inlets: shoreline effects and recommended action. 192 Studies on the use of sulfites to control shrimp melanosis (Blackspot) 147 Entendiendo, Evaluando y Solucionando los Problemas de Contaminación de Luz en Playas de Anidamiento de Tortugas Marinas. 110 Bioeconomic modelling of hard clam growout in Florida: the replacement decision. 106

Visits from 4,612 unique IP addresses; daily average between 100 to about 600 visits Total # of visits = 11,649; 10,192 of these visits were not referrals or links from other sites like Google * Over 1,000 searches in Google led users to aquacomm.fcla.edu aquacomm.fcla.edu * the top non-search linking sites were enaca.org, eprints.org, agnic.org, iamslic.orgenaca.org iamslic.org Statistics January March 2008 update

Navigating the site Most browses were by subject categories (50% of all browsing), followed by year (25%) and then the "latest additions" category (25%). 167 Simple searches conducted within the repository search interface 197 Advanced Searches conducted within repository search interface Record #125 was the most-viewed object metadata record (52 views) Florida's East Coast Inlets: shoreline effects and recommended action.Florida's East Coast Inlets: shoreline effects and recommended action. Aquaculture Asia Oct issue was the most downloaded paper (89 downloads)

Repository purpose and scope  Facilitate exchange of scientific research related to marine/aquatic environments.  Build content based on born digital and legacy documents produced by IAMSLIC member organizations and their partners.  Offer repository services where local, stable IT support is lacking (or where non-OAI compliant services exist).  The contents of Aquatic Commons goes beyond the scope of the Open Access which focuses on capturing the scientific and research literature that authors give to the world without expectation of payment.  Long-term goal is to assist in providing access to legacy collections.

Relationship to OceanDocs Aquatic Commons is one of a number of thematic digital marine and aquatic repositories. It is complementary to OceanDocs, which is supported by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) specifically to collect, preserve and facilitate access to all research output from members of their Ocean Data and Information Networks (ODINS).OceanDocs The records of both repositories are harvested by Avano which aggregates records from marine and aquatic repositories around the World.Avano

Creating the Flow: expanding the role of the Aquatic Commons Reasons to share through Aquatic Commons Initiative  Open access materials are used more, both in terms of citations and downloads.  NIH, Wellness Trust, and other governmental agencies have taken the position that publicly funded programs should make the results of those programs freely available to the public. This interpretation is rapidly gaining global acceptance.  Malcolm Getz of Vanderbilt reported “a sevenfold increase in use of the MedLine Index followings its move to open access and 30% use by non-professionals, which clearly suggests that there can be a significant impact beyond traditional subscription users…”  Aquatic Commons repository is OAI compliant permitting service providers to harvest and broaden access.

Listed with: ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repostories SCIRUS OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories University of Illinois OAI-PMH Data Provider Registry Harvested by: AVANO OAIster Google

account Aquatic Commons Board now has a Google mail account:

Searching and depositing