SWORDV3 Poster for 10th RDA Plenary

SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) is a lightweight protocol for depositing and updating content from one location to another. The SWORD vision is ‘lowering the barriers to deposit‘, principally for depositing content into repositories, but potentially for depositing into any system which wants to receive content from remote sources.

The SWORDV3 project has been funded by Jisc with two key aims for the next generation of the SWORD Protocol:

• To bring SWORD up-to-date with the developments in the repository sphere in the last 5 years, with alignment to new protocols and new use-cases such as data publishing and complex objects.
• To establish community and governance mechanisms for the standard and supporting code libraries to ensure ongoing maintenance and evolution. This will include a technical validation process to allow third party libraries to be hosted under the SWORD brand.

In September, the project was formally announced at PASIG 2017 in Oxford and the RDA 10th Plenary in Montreal. We are looking for expressions of interest in becoming involved as stakeholders in the project: to make suggestions, review activities and meet as required over the coming months. In particular, we are interested in making contact with people who may wish to develop SWORD V3 libraries for their preferred platforms or languages since we aim to provide some support for such activities during the project. Please contact one of the project team  if you are interested in participating, and indicate if you are interested in the technical or community aspects of the project (or both!).

The key members of the project team are:

• Dom Fripp – Jisc (Funder) – Project Manager, SWORD user through the Jisc Research Data Shared Service
• Richard Jones – Cottage Labs Ltd – Technical Lead, SWORD contributor and implementer
• Neil Jefferies – Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford – Community Lead, SWORD user through Data2paper project (and internally within the Bodleian Library)