SHERPA (organisation)

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

This was an endeavour to support the establishment of a number of open access institutional repositories based in UK universities. SHERPA, the organisation, is sometimes erroneously referred to as the SHERPA Project. SHERPA is managed by Bill Hubbard.

As well as a staff team based at the University of Nottingham, 33 research institutions and organisations comprise the SHERPA Partnership.^[1] The makeup of this partnership includes many if not all of the most research active institutions in the UK and provide practitioner led experience to the project team.

Awards

SHERPA’s work in supporting open access 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.^[2]

Current projects and services

SHERPA is involved as a full or advisory partner in a number of projects and services, which include:

Repositories Support Project (RSP) - support service for UK repository growth
SHERPA/RoMEO – definitive listing publishers' copyright agreements & retained author rights
JULIET - Research Funders Archiving Mandates and Guidelines
OpenDOAR - a directory and tool for worldwide open access repositories
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

Past projects

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
UKCoRR - United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories, professional organisation for UK Open Access repository administrators and managers. An output from SHERPA Plus.

References