SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) is an organisation originally set up in 2002 to run and manage the SHERPA Project.

History

SHERPA began as an endeavour to support the establishment of a number of open access

institutional repositories An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published work ...

based in UK universities. SHERPA, the organisation, is sometimes erroneously referred to as the SHERPA Project. SHERPA was founded in 2002 by Stephen Pinfield, who continued as its director until 2012. Throughout its life, SHERPA has been managed by Bill Hubbard, first as its manager then as director from 2012 onwards. As well as a staff team based at Jisc (formerly the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

), 33 research institutions and organisations comprise the SHERPA Partnership. The makeup of this partnership includes many, if not all, of the most research active institutions in the UK and provides practitioner-led experience to the project team.

Awards

SHERPA's work in supporting

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

and repositories on a national and international level was recognised in 2007 with the award of the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communication.

Current projects and services

SHERPA is involved as a full or advisory partner in a number of projects and services, which include:
FACT
— Funders & Authors Compliance Tool — helps authors comply with research funders' policies on open access to publications * SHERPA/RoMEO, RoMEO – definitive listing of publishers' copyright agreements and retained author rights * SHERPA/Juliet, Juliet – Research funders' archiving mandates and guidelines *

OpenDOAR OpenDOAR: Directory of Open Access Repositories is a UK-based website that lists open access repositories (including academic ones). It is searchable by locale, content, and other measures. The service does not require complete repository detail ...

- a directory of worldwide open access repositories

SHERPA/RoMEO

SHERPA/RoMEO is a service run by SHERPA to show the copyright and

self-archiving policies of academic journals. RoMEO is an acronym for Rights MEtadata for Open archiving. The database used a colour-coding scheme to classify publishers according to their self-archiving policy. This shows authors whether the journal allows

preprint In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset versio ...

or postprint archiving in their copyright transfer agreements. It currently holds records for over 22,000 journals. The colour codes were retired in 2020, with the launch of a new site.

SHERPA/Juliet

SHERPA/Juliet is an

online database An online database is a database accessible from a local network or the Internet, as opposed to one that is stored locally on an individual computer or its attached storage (such as a CD). Online databases are hosted on websites, made available as s ...

of open access mandates adopted by academic funding bodies. It is part of the SHERPA suite of services around

and is run by Jisc (formerly the

). The database contains information about more than 100 funders, mostly from the United Kingdom. For each of them, Juliet indicates their policy regarding self-archiving,

open access journals Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

and archival of research data. Users can suggest updates to the records or the addition of a new funder via a form. This service is mainly useful to researchers who have received project-based funding and want a clear summary of their funder. Links to the original policies are also provided.

Completed projects

Repositories Support Project The Repository Support Project (RSP) was a 7-year Jisc funded project set up to support and develop the UK network of institutional repositories. It was originally funded through to March 2009, but was then extended to run until early 2011. The pr ...

(RSP) - support service for UK repository growth * EThOS - developing a national eTheses service * SHERPA Project - which helped develop archives in research-led institutions * SHERPA Plus - expanding the repository network in the UK * SHERPA DP - looking at preservation models * PROSPERO - scoping an interim repository for UK academics * the Depot – UK based interim repository (stemming from the PROSPERO project) * DRIVER ( Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) - developing a cross-European repository network infrastructure * UKCoRR - United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories, professional organisation for UK Open Access repository administrators and managers. An output from SHERPA Plus.

References

External links

SHERPA web site

RSP web site

OpenDOAR site

RoMEO service

JULIET service

UKCoRR web site
{{Authority control Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom Organisations based in Nottinghamshire Organizations established in 2002 Archives in the United Kingdom Science and technology in Nottinghamshire University of Nottingham 2002 establishments in the United Kingdom Open access projects