Completed Project -

SHERPA Project

Mission  |  Documents  |  Partners  |  Staff  |   Governance

Mission

This project has finished (January 2006). Much of its work in advocacy and assitance in the establishment of institutional repositories is continuing under SHERPA Plus. The final evaluation report for the SHERPA Project by the independant consultancy CERLIM is available.

The SHERPA project had the following aims:

• set up institutional open access e-print repositories in 20 partner institutions which comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI PMH) using eprints.org software
• investigate key issues in creating, populating and maintaining e-print collections, including: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), quality control, collection development policies, business models, scholarly communication cultures, and institutional strategies
• work with OAI Service Providers to achieve acceptable (technical, metadata and collection management) standards for the effective dissemination of the content
• investigate digital preservation of e-prints using the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model;
• disseminate lessons learned and provide advice to others wishing to set up similar services

SHERPA was part of the JISC FAIR (Focus on Access to Institutional Resources) Programme which supports projects aiming to achieve the "disclosure of institutional assets" with the vision of setting up a "web of resources built by groups with a long term stake in the future of those resources, but made available through service providers to the whole community of learning."

Project documents

• SHERPA project proposal (pdf), Version 2, October 2002
• SHERPA - Project summary (pdf), - a single page, bullet point summary of the project and institutional repositories. December 2003

As part of the JISC FAIR Programme, there are web pages on the main JISC site describing the SHERPA Project and its work.

• SHERPA project outline - outlines the basis for the project
• SHERPA project review - as part of a synthesis of the work of the FAIR programme, this puts the work and outputs of the project in context with other FAIR projects.

Within the project plan was a work package for evaluation of the project by an independent consultancy. We are pleased that the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) agreed to act in this capacity. Further information on CERLIM's work for SHERPA is included on the main CERLIM website.

• Evaluation Plan for the SHERPA Project - outlines the evaluation work that was to be done to assess the work of the project.
• Final Evaluation report for the SHERPA Project.

Partners

Development Partners British Library University of Edinburgh University of Glasgow University of Nottingham University of Oxford White Rose Partnership University of Leeds University of Sheffield University of York Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS)

Associate Partners University of Birmingham University of Bristol University of Cambridge University of Durham University of Newcastle London LEAP Birkbeck College Imperial College Kings College London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Royal Holloway School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University College, London (UCL)

Affiliate Partners

The SHERPA Project was open to institutions and other bodies joining the project as Affiliate Partners. Find out more information here.

Staff

Central Staff

Director,  Manager,  Technical Officer,  Preservation Officer

Project Officers

AHDS,  British Library,  Birkbeck,  Birmingham,  Bristol,  Cambridge,  Durham,  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Imperial,  Kings,  Leeds,  Newcastle Nottingham,  Oxford,  Royal Holloway,  SOAS,  Sheffield,  UCL,  York

Governance

The work of the project at individual institutions was under the control of Project Officers, supported by a Technical Officer, Mike Gardner and a Preservation Officer, Gareth Knight. Enquiries about project work at specific sites should be made to individual Project Officers.

Day to day management of the project overall was by the Project Manager, Bill Hubbard, based at the University of Nottingham. He liaised with other projects in the JISC FAIR Programme, other interested institutions, organisations and initiatives. Enquiries and comments on the work of the project should be made to him in the first instance.

The Project Director, Stephen Pinfield, oversaw the management of the project and ensured adherence to project aims. He also maintained liaison with other interested institutions and scholarly bodies and represented the interests and management of the project at senior inter-institutional levels and within CURL.

As part of the formal management structure of the SHERPA Project, a management group was set up to oversee the development of the project and its adherence to its aims and objectives through regular meetings. Membership was drawn from within the project and the HE community. The SHERPA Management Group (SMG) was chaired by Paul Ayris, Director of Library Services, UCL and Chair of the CURL Scholarly Communications Task Force.

The SHERPA project reported to JISC through Chris Awre, who was in charge of the JISC FAIR Programme, which had its own Advisory Board.

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