I’ve been trying to learn a little more about the potential for data management solutions through the UC3 Merritt repository, and decide how this compares to commercial alternatives such as Amazon S3, Picasa/Flickr (obviously for images only), and field-specific and publication specific repositories such as Dryad. Merritt email support have been very helpful in answering my questions and concerns.
- Persistence: of the data itself, of the URLs & object identifiers, of access to the data? Not surprisingly they have standard redundancy backup procedures for archival standards in place.
- Object identifiers: UC3 also provides DOIs for objects which can be purchased independently of archiving in the Merritt repository and are indexed in Web of Science.
- Cost and pricing structure: $1040/Tb/year, prorated for how much storage you actually use. No charge for upload/download, unlike S3. EZID for DOIs are separate charge: Annual charge unlimited number of DOIs: $75/user, $375/group, or $1,125 for whole university
The Good: An institutional repository seems like a safer bet than an Internet business, even if it’s as large as Amazon or Google. After all, the UC’s have been around a lot longer.
The Not-So-Good: The big concern for me here is that this is guaranteed (both for IDs and for data itself) only as long as you are (or someone else is) paying the annual fee.
Other Concerns: Can I automate script to upload, download, and embed data? The wealth of tools available for Flickr or Github through the user-extensible API makes it very easy to integrate these repositories into my workflow. I am still unclear how easy this would be with the UC3 archiving services.
Still promising: The staff recognize these challenges, particularly in their contrast to the standard short-term grant-based funding model of science and in working with the research institutions for support covering these costs. Further, it seems the details aren’t set in stone yet, but are an evolving part of the system:
It’s a tough question for which we don’t have a comprehensive answer at the moment. Our fee model does not match up well with the funding model of grant projects–our costs are ongoing, our accounting rules prohibit us from carrying funds across fiscal years, yet our customers may have funding for only a limited time period. We want to partner with organizations committed to the long-term preservation of their digital content. We would work with our partners to find new organizational homes if their commitment changed, due to changes in funding and priorities. This isn’t really an answer, other than to say that we view the relationship as a partnership, and we want to help our partners succeed in their goals for long-term preservation.
–Merritt helpdesk.