1. Are documents stored in SSOAR citable?

Many people still think that electronic repositories are less secure than other sources and that lasting access to their content is not possible. Contrary to this persistently-held view, documents stored in SSOAR are citable on a long-term basis. A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is generated for each document archived in SSOAR. This URN ensures the citability of the document.

With regard to the formal guidelines for citing online sources, there are different standards, depending on the discipline in question and the publisher/journal in which the SSOAR document is to be cited. As a matter of principle, you should always cite the relevant bibliographic data of the work in question and the URN.

 

2. Can I recommend and forward SSOAR documents to others?

By clicking the Send to button you access a form which you can use to recommend the document to others. (This function will not be available until after the initial test phase.)

 

3. Can I export document data?

Using the Export function, the bibliographic data of one or several documents on a list (generated by searching or browsing) can be exported to Endnote, Refworks or Bibtex. (This function will not be available until after the initial test phase.)

 

4. Are download statistics available for individual documents?

Download and access data are recorded for each document. Unfortunately, authors do not (yet) have access to their personal download statistics. (This function will not be available until after the initial test phase.) We also plan to compile lists of access figures.

 

5. What databases, search engines and other retrieval systems will have access to documents stored in SSOAR?

SSOAR is not just a document archive in its own right, it is also linked to other larger information systems. As a result, SSOAR documents can also be found via the interfaces between these systems. We aim gradually to participate in further information systems. Here is a list which we will continually extend

Information portals/gateways:

·         sowiport (social science portal)

·         vascoda (inter-disciplinary portal for scientific and scholarly information)

·         worldwidescience.org (global scientific gateway)

SOLIS ? Social Science Literature Information System:

Open Access-specific lists & accesses (planned):

  • DRIVER-Project (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research)
  • OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)
  • BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

General search engines:

And of course, SSOAR can also be found via all the usual Internet search engines. We are making particular efforts to get SSOAR documents indexed and findable via Google Scholar and other scholarly search engines.

SSOAR as a data provider:

In addition, an OAI (Open Archives Initiative) interface is being developed for SSOAR which will enable other repositories and information systems to search and retrieve the SSOAR documents with ease. SSOAR will be registered as a data provider for OAI-PMH (see the list under  http://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites).

If you have any suggestions as to how we can broaden our reach even further, please send an e-mail to our editorial staff: redaktion(at)ssoar.info.