Brief Outline

TARDIS will investigate strategies to overcome the technical, cultural and academic barriers, which currently restrict the development of institutional e-print archives, and will develop a working model of a multidisciplinary institutional archive. The archive will be accessible through the University Library's Web Portal as part of an integrated institutional and subject-focused information resource. The potential for delivery through an external service provider will also be assessed.

The project has the following five key objectives:

To assess the key barriers impeding support for the creation of institutional archives for a representative set of subjects across at least four disciplines and to develop an integrated technical and academic strategy to overcome them.
To develop the current version of the Eprints software as a medium for both for facilitated and self-archiving in the context of a multidisciplinary institutional archive.
To win commitment from the target academic groups to contributing to a multidisciplinary institutional archive and effect a change in the perception of the value of such archives to the research mission of the University.
To develop a model for standardised metadata which will facilitate both mediated and self-archiving and promote the integration of eprint archives into other information resources.
To explore the value of partnerships based on shared knowledge and skill between data providers, technical developers and professional support staff which will facilitate change.

The archive will focus on the research output of the University (an estimated 2,000 publications annually, based on the RAE2001 figures) and will involve both pre and post publication e-prints, conference papers, research reports, and working papers. Where appropriate models will be designed to ensure controlled access on copyright compliant material. It is not however envisaged that the project will cover IPR and copyright issues other than by defining their perceived role in facilitating or hindering academic staff in contributing to the archive.