Tag: jisc

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Clients News SWORD v2

SWORD v2 – request for project proposals

The JISC funded SWORD v2 project has been working to extend the original SWORD protocol that facilitates the deposit of materials into repositories.  Based on the Atom-Pub protocol, SWORD v2 enhances the power of SWORD by taking the existing ability of deposit, and adding the ability to retrieve, update, or delete deposits as they pass through the deposit lifecycle.

The project has developed SWORD v2 implementations for DSpace, EPrints and Fedora.  In addition it has developed client code libraries (APIs) for Java, PHP, Ruby and Python.

In order to increase the number of SWORD v2 client implementations, the JISC have donated over £5,000 to fund new SWORD v2 clients.  The majority of this money is being made available in a contested request for projects.  We are seeking developers or development teams to submit ideas for creating new SWORD v2 clients, either by upgrading existing SWORD clients, building SWORD functionality into other scholarly communications tools, or developing entirely new deposit tools.  In addition a small amount of the money will be used to provide technical support to the winning developers by the original SWORD v2 team ensuring that the projects have access to all the help and support they need.

Entrants are encouraged to make use of the existing SWORD v2 client code libraries.  Using the existing client code libraries will lower the development effort needed, enabling rapid, efficient, and cost-effective development.  Proposals to add SWORD v2 into existing well-adopted and mature systems are particularly welcome.

To enter, please tell us the following, in no more than 3 pages:

  • What you plan to develop
  • How this will have a positive impact on repository deposit rates
  • Who will be part of the development team, and some information about their skills
  • How much money you request to perform this development
  • Contact details for the developer(s), including any institutional affiliations

Entries will be judged by a panel of staff from the SWORD v2 project, UKOLN, and JISC.  It is anticipated that 2 to 5 projects will be funded, depending upon the quality of submissions, and the amount of money that each submission requests.  The decision of the judges is final, and the project reserves the right not to spend the whole amount of money if not enough entries of sufficient quality are received.

By submitting a proposal you additionally agree to the following:

  • The completed project will be delivered within 3 months of being notified of their success.
  • The code created will be licenced with an appropriate Open Source licence (to be discussed and agreed with the project), and the source code published online.
  • All liability for tax, local or foreign on the money is the responsibility of the developers.

To enter, submit your proposal to info@swordapp.org by 5:00pm Friday 12th August BST.  Winners should be announced by the end of August.  Proposals are welcome from any country.

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News SWORD v2

SWORD extension project

We’re glad to announce that the SWORD v2 project has been granted extension funding by JISC. The original SWORD v2 project has been extending the current SWORD standard from its current model of ‘fire and forget’ deposits, to a full CRUD model where items can be updated, replaced, or deleted too.  The project will deliver the new draft standard, server implementations for DSpace, EPrints and Fedora, along with client libraries in Java, PHP, Ruby, and Python.

For this extension to the project, the SWORD team is joining up with the SONEX team.  SONEX (Scholarly Output Notification and EXchange) have spent the past couple of years undertaking various activities, one of which has been identifying deposit opportunities within the scholarly communications environment.  The SWORD and SONEX teams have worked closely together in the past on exploring how SWORD can facilitate the deposit use cases identified by the SONEX work.

The extension project will be split into two halves:

  1. Explore the applicability of SWORD for dataset deposit
  2. Develop further clients to increase the adoption of SWORD v2

The first part of the extension project has already started.  Projects and researchers who have been working with dataset deposit into repositories are being contacted in order to find out more about the way that data transfer takes place, to see where SWORD could fit in.  In particular, projects of the JISC MRD (Managing Research Data) programme are being targeted.  Once this work has been completed, a gap analysis of their use cases and requirements will be compared with the functionality offered by SWORD.

Further details of the second part of the project will given in other blog posts in the near future – stay tuned: we’re looking for input in the form of ideas, possible systems to be enhanced with SWORD v2 functionality, and we’ll be seeking funded development parters.

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News Repositories SWORD v2

SWORDv2 project receives funding from JISC

We’re pleased to announce some great news…

The SWORDv2 Project has been funded by JISC, under the Information Environment 2011 Programme, to extend repository deposit to cover the wider scholarly communication infrastructure. The project will develop a second generation of the SWORD deposit protocol that will enable it to encompass a wider set of systems within the scholarly communication infrastructure, and to allow active management of artefacts as they change throughout their lifetime.

The original SWORD projects dealt with creating new repository resources by package deposit – a simple case which was at the root of their success but which also represented a key limitation. This method of deposit could be summed up as ‘fire-and-forget’. SWORD supports the deposit of the content, but once it is deposited, the user of a SWORD client is unable to track the progress of the item through any workflows, make alterations or updates to the content, or to delete it.

The next version of SWORD will push the standard towards supporting a full deposit lifecycle for all types of scholarly systems by specifying and implementing update, retrieve and delete extensions to the specification. This will enable these systems to be integrated into a broader range of other systems within the scholarly infrastructure, by supporting an increased range of behaviours and use cases.

The project will deliver a new technical standard for the SWORDv2, repository implementations for DSpace, EPrints, and Fedora, and four client API libraries.

The first generation of the SWORD protocol was developed in the UK with funds from JISC and support from UKOLN, and has been adopted worldwide with acclaim. The project won an award for the most innovative project at the JISC Repositories and Preservation conference in 2009. The standard has gone on to be implemented in all major open source repository platforms, and has clients created in various forms ranging from Facebook to Microsoft Word.

We’ll post further details in the next couple of weeks concerning the launch of the project, further details about the scope of the project, and information about how to get involved.