Monthly Archives: July 2011

SWORD v2 – request for project proposals

The JISC funded SWORD v2 project has been working to extend the original SWORD protocol that facilitates the deposit of materials into repositories.  Based on the Atom-Pub protocol, SWORD v2 enhances the power of SWORD by taking the existing ability of deposit, and adding the ability to retrieve, update, or delete deposits as they pass through the deposit lifecycle.

The project has developed SWORD v2 implementations for DSpace, EPrints and Fedora.  In addition it has developed client code libraries (APIs) for Java, PHP, Ruby and Python.

In order to increase the number of SWORD v2 client implementations, the JISC have donated over £5,000 to fund new SWORD v2 clients.  The majority of this money is being made available in a contested request for projects.  We are seeking developers or development teams to submit ideas for creating new SWORD v2 clients, either by upgrading existing SWORD clients, building SWORD functionality into other scholarly communications tools, or developing entirely new deposit tools.  In addition a small amount of the money will be used to provide technical support to the winning developers by the original SWORD v2 team ensuring that the projects have access to all the help and support they need.

Entrants are encouraged to make use of the existing SWORD v2 client code libraries.  Using the existing client code libraries will lower the development effort needed, enabling rapid, efficient, and cost-effective development.  Proposals to add SWORD v2 into existing well-adopted and mature systems are particularly welcome.

To enter, please tell us the following, in no more than 3 pages:

  • What you plan to develop
  • How this will have a positive impact on repository deposit rates
  • Who will be part of the development team, and some information about their skills
  • How much money you request to perform this development
  • Contact details for the developer(s), including any institutional affiliations

Entries will be judged by a panel of staff from the SWORD v2 project, UKOLN, and JISC.  It is anticipated that 2 to 5 projects will be funded, depending upon the quality of submissions, and the amount of money that each submission requests.  The decision of the judges is final, and the project reserves the right not to spend the whole amount of money if not enough entries of sufficient quality are received.

By submitting a proposal you additionally agree to the following:

  • The completed project will be delivered within 3 months of being notified of their success.
  • The code created will be licenced with an appropriate Open Source licence (to be discussed and agreed with the project), and the source code published online.
  • All liability for tax, local or foreign on the money is the responsibility of the developers.

To enter, submit your proposal to info@swordapp.org by 5:00pm Friday 12th August BST.  Winners should be announced by the end of August.  Proposals are welcome from any country.

SWORD extension project

We’re glad to announce that the SWORD v2 project has been granted extension funding by JISC. The original SWORD v2 project has been extending the current SWORD standard from its current model of ‘fire and forget’ deposits, to a full CRUD model where items can be updated, replaced, or deleted too.  The project will deliver the new draft standard, server implementations for DSpace, EPrints and Fedora, along with client libraries in Java, PHP, Ruby, and Python.

For this extension to the project, the SWORD team is joining up with the SONEX team.  SONEX (Scholarly Output Notification and EXchange) have spent the past couple of years undertaking various activities, one of which has been identifying deposit opportunities within the scholarly communications environment.  The SWORD and SONEX teams have worked closely together in the past on exploring how SWORD can facilitate the deposit use cases identified by the SONEX work.

The extension project will be split into two halves:

  1. Explore the applicability of SWORD for dataset deposit
  2. Develop further clients to increase the adoption of SWORD v2

The first part of the extension project has already started.  Projects and researchers who have been working with dataset deposit into repositories are being contacted in order to find out more about the way that data transfer takes place, to see where SWORD could fit in.  In particular, projects of the JISC MRD (Managing Research Data) programme are being targeted.  Once this work has been completed, a gap analysis of their use cases and requirements will be compared with the functionality offered by SWORD.

Further details of the second part of the project will given in other blog posts in the near future – stay tuned: we’re looking for input in the form of ideas, possible systems to be enhanced with SWORD v2 functionality, and we’ll be seeking funded development parters.