News from 2015

I'm pleased to report that we have seen our first RCUK-compliant RIOXX record in the wild. Well done to the University of Keele Research Repository! You can see the validation report, and the record itself.

Currently, all of those institutional repositories which have declared support for RIOXX are based on the ePrints software, using a plugin especially developed to support RIOXX. There is a little (although not much) information about this plugin here - Jisc paid for the work, but it is not clear from that page who actually did the development (although there is a useful list of potential sources of technical support). A manager of one of these repositories recently contacted me to suggest that the validation and reporting script (output here) was offering a distorted view of the adoptions and accuracy or RIOXX reporting because it was harvesting a sample of the first 10 records, rather than harvesting more recently created or updated records which had more chance of being RIOXX-compatible.

I'm very pleased to note that the number of instituional repositories declaring support for RIOXX has reached 30! This number has trebled in 6 months which is a healthy rate of adoption. This is due to the growing adoption of the Jisc-funded ePrints plugin. It would be good to see some other systems listed: there are, I believe, ongoing developments to introduce RIOXX support into other repository systems. Who will be next?

RIOXX operates in a similar space to OpenAIRE and so the RIOXX team at EDINA have been concerned to make the two metadata application profiles as mutually compatible as possible. Working closely with the OpenAIRE team, we have prepared a document which explains how to 'map' properties from RIOXX 2.0 to OpenAIRE 3.0, with some guidance also on mapping terms in some of the controlled vocabularies. This 'crosswalk' document can be found here.

The universities of Hull, Huddersfield and Lincoln, collaborating as HHuLOA, have been analysing RIOXX 2.0 in the context of implementation within their various repository systems. While Lincoln and Huddersfield have deployed ePrints, Hull has a Hydra repository. This is the first information I have seen from people intending to implement RIOXX in a Hydra system, so is very welcome! You can read a summary of their findings, or access the full report (PDF)

Following a very useful discussion with Mike Taylor (see comments on this post), I have split the validation of RIOXX records into two stages: a basic syntax check, following less strict rules and constraints than the full RCUK requirements a strict validation check against the full RCUK requirements The reason for doing this is to allow implementers to check that their software is correctly set-up. For example, if a RIOXX-enabling plugin for a repository is correctly configured, but the repository's metadata holds values for the 'version' which are not from the RCUK-approved vocabulary for versions, then records from that repository will fail the full RCUK validation test.

I am periodically surveying repositories, using a list generated by the OpenDOAR API, to see which of these are serving RIOXX 2.0 metadata records. At the time of writing, 11 repositories are declaring support for this metadata format. You can see these listed here. I think that these early adopters are all ePrints systems, using the recently developed ePrints plugin for RIOXX. For each repository, I have harvested 10 RIOXX records to examine them for compliance with the RIOXX metadata profile.

The RIOXX team is pleased to announce the release of version 2.0 of the RIOXX metadata application profile and guidelines. The following resources are now available: metadata application profile guidelines for repository managers XML Schema files and resources The team would like to acknowledge the significant support in particular of Ben Ryan (RCUK) and Ben Johnson (HEFCE) in preparing this version 2.0 release, and would also like to thank the many contributors who have offered reviews, suggestions and corrections over the last few months.