FAIR Programme - Machine Readable Rights Metadata (RoMEO)

FAIR Programme – Machine Readable Rights Metadata (RoMEO) Project

Funded by: JISC

Project investigators: Charles Oppenheim and Steve Probets

Duration: June 2002 – July 2003

Project Homepage

Description:
The RoMEO Project (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving) was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee for one year (1 August 2002 - 31 July 2003) to investigate the rights issues surrounding the 'self-archiving' of research in the UK academic community under the Open Archive Initiative's Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.

It performed a series of stakeholder surveys to ascertain how 'give-away' research literature (and metadata) is used, and how it should be protected. It considered existing schemas and vocabularies (such as the Open Digital Rights Language) and one solution for representing rights metadata was developed. A solution for the protection of the IPR in the metadata itself was also be created.

In addition, a survey of journal publishers Copyright Transfer Agreements was undertaken which, in association with the SHERPA team at Nottingham University led to the formation of the widely used SHERPA/RoMEO database of journal publishers’ copyright policies. (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php)

Publications:

Gadd, E.A., Oppenheim, C. and Probets, S.G., ''ROMEO Studies 2: How Academics Want to Protect Their Open-Access Research Papers'', Journal of Information Science, 29(5), 2003, pp 333-356.

Gadd, E.A., Oppenheim, C. and Probets, S.G., ''Romeo 3: How Academics Expect to Use Open-Access Papers'', Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 35(3), 2003, pp 171-187.

Gadd, E.A., Oppenheim, C. and Probets, S.G., ''RoMEO Studies 1: The Impact of Copyright Ownership on Academic Author Self-Archiving'', Journal of Documentation, 59(3), 1st June 2003, 243-277, ISSN 00220418.

Gadd, E.A., Oppenheim, C. and Probets, S.G., ''RoMEO Studies 4: An Analysis of Journal Publishers' Copyright Agreements'', Learned Publishing, 16(4), 1st October 2003, 293-308, ISSN 09531513.

Gadd, E.A., Oppenheim, C. and Probets, S.G., ''ROMEO Studies 5: IPR Issues Facing OAI Data and Service Providers'', The Electronic Library, 22(2), 2004, pp 121-138.

Gadd, E.A., Oppenheim, C. and Probets, S.G., ''RoMEO Studies 6: Rights Metadata for Open Archiving'', Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems, 38(1), 1st January 2004, 5-14, ISSN 00330337.

Contact: Charles Oppenheim or Steve Probets
Email: c.oppenheim@lboro.ac.uk s.g.probets@lboro.ac.uk