Collaborative Services Partnerships
The collaborative structure was established over 15 years ago for the mutual benefit of SCURL member libraries. Partners benefit from the infrastructure and the expertise of developers at the University of Edinburgh. The service offers a supported hosting platform for their repository, journal, or monograph, as well as access to support and technical expertise which may not be available in their own institution.
The services provided by the University of Edinburgh operate on a not-for-profit basis and the income generated is used to benefit all partners through further development of services.
The University of Edinburgh hosts regular meetings of the partnerships to share knowledge, experience and expertise across participating institutions. SCURL members who are interested in exploring shared service options through the partnership should use the contact form in the first instance.
Repository Partnership
The repository software used in the partnership is DSpace. Each partner has a test and live instance of their DSpace repository hosted, maintained and secured within the University of Edinburgh’s infrastructure.
There are currently six partner repositories:
Heriot-Watt University ROS Theses Repository
The Research Scotland Consortium Research Scotland Repository
St Andrews University St Andrews Research Repository
The University of Aberdeen Aberdeen University Research Archive
The University of Edinburgh Edinburgh Research Archive
Queen Margaret University QMU Repositories
Journals and Monograph Partnership
The journal software used is Open Journal Systems (OJS) and the monograph software is Open Monograph Press (OMP), both from the Public Knowledge Project. The annual hosting fee for each partner covers upgrade and maintenance and 1.5 days of development time over the year. Similar to the repository partnership, partners can agree to collaborate to use their pre-allocated development time. Development time is charged to the Development and Systems team at the University of Edinburgh to cover the resource costs.
There are currently eight partners in the journal and monograph partnership:
Digital Curation Centre International Journal of Digital Curation
Heriot-Watt University Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity
Robert Gordon University Journals @ RGU
Royal Botanic Gardens Sibbaldia: The International Journal Of Botanic Garden Horticulture
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Journals - Society of Antiquaries of Scotland SOAS Open Access E-Books
St Andrews University University of St Andrews Journal Hosting Service (currently moving across)
The University of Edinburgh UoE Journal Hosting Service
The University of Highlands and Islands