[OAI-general] Fwd: Re: Elsevier's ChemWeb Preprint Archive

[Steve Hitchcock]

Jim,           You are right, all statements to date from the Chemistry 
Preprint Server on OAi seem to be vague, professing support but not 
implementation yet. The key point perhaps, especially as this is a preprint 
rather than an eprint archive, is whether the journals, say those that 
accept papers from the CPS, are willing to make metadata available through 
OAi. There is no reason why they shouldn't, since for the last year OAi has 
explicitly had a digital library scope rather than an eprint scope. Except 
the publishers will have noted there appears to be value in the metadata, 
currently being realised by CrossRef. The only publisher, as far as I am 
aware, that is planning to make journals data available through OAi is 
BioMed Central. Are there others?

Steve Hitchcock
Open Citation (OpCit) Project <http://opcit.eprints.org/>
IAM Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton SO17 1BJ,  UK
Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel:  +44 (0)23 8059 3256     Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865


At 14:42 15/08/01 -0400, Jim Till wrote:
>On Tue, 29 May 2001, I posted  message to this Forum which included this
>criticism of the Chemistry Preprint Server (CPS):
>
>[jt]>Another flaw [is that the CPS isn't] on the list of "Open Archives"
>[jt]>(at: http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/Register/BrowseSites.pl).
>[jt]>So, the CPS archive doesn't meet an "inter-operability" criterion.
>
>I've just received a copy of Volume 4, Issue 33 of the ChemWeb.com News
>Bulletin (distributed to subscribers via email on August 15, 2001).  It's
>a special issue in recognition of the establishment of the CPS, a year ago
>(on August 21, 2000 - the CPS is at: http://preprint.chemweb.com).
>
>An excerpt from this newsletter:
>
> > The CPS was developed by closely following the Los Alamos archives
> > (http://arxiv.org), which cover physics and related disciplines. In
> > setting up the service ChemWeb.com has constantly referred to the Open
> > Archive Initiative (http://www.openarchives.org) for e-print archives.
>
>In this excerpt, it's emphasized that the design of the CPS server has
>been guided by the Open Archives Initiative.  But, it seems to me that a
>crucial element, inter-operability of OAI-compliant eprint archives,
>probably still isn't being met by the CPS server.
>
>I've just visited the current list of registered OAI-conforming
>repositories (see:
>http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/Register/BrowseSites.pl).
>
>The CPS isn't listed.  So, either it's registered but doesn't appear yet
>on the list, it isn't registered, or it isn't fully OAI-conforming.  I
>suspect that it isn't fully OAI-conforming.
>
>Have I missed something?
>
>Jim Till
>University of Toronto