Research Paper: “Global Picture of OAI-PMH Repositories Through the Analysis of 6 Key Open Archive Meta-Catalogs” (Preprint)

The following preprint was recently shared by its authors on arXiv.
Title
Global Picture of OAI-PMH Repositories Through the Analysis of 6 Key Open Archive Meta-Catalogs
Authors
Arnaud Gaudinat
HEG (University of Applied Sciences, Geneva)
Jonas Beausire
Megan Fuss
HEG (University of Applied Sciences, Geneva)
Elisa Banfi
University of Geneva
Julien Gobeill
HEG (University of Applied Sciences, Geneva)
Patrick Ruch
Information Science Department of the HEG (University of Applied Sciences, Geneva)
Abstract

By the end of the late 90’s the Open Archives Initiative needed direction to insure its improvement and thus, created the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) standard. The movement showed a rise in popularity, followed by a decline then a relative stabilization. This process was essentially a way to ensure the viability of open archive repositories. However, a meta-catalog containing an ensemble of repositories was never established, which lead to confusion of what could be found in said catalogs.
This study ultimately aims to find out what repository content can be found and where with the use of the 6 key meta-catalogs. Although they undoubtedly have numerous limitations pertaining to the available data, this article seeks to compare the common data in each meta-catalog and estimates which repositories are found within them (with approx. less than 1% in common within the 6 meta-catalog).
Decisively, this paper identifies the need to collate this data (with a total of 42.3% OAI-PMH repositories specific to each meta-catalog) and improve current search tools, hence portraying the benefits of a comprehensible single unifying meta-catalog for end users.

Direct to Full Text Paper (22 pages; PDF)

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