About NeoRef
Two major movements are occuring that affect the storage and communication of scholarly material. First, is the push for open archives, i.e the Open Archives Initiative. Second, is the increase in freely available scholarly material, such a e-prints, e-journals, and self publishing on the web by authors. Taken together this opens up the possibility of a freely accessible universal open archive containing all scholarly material. In order to be useful, however, the archived materials must be classified and indexed according to a common methodology when placed in archives, and searchable and retrievable based on these same classifications.
NeoRef is a methodology for how all kinds of different digital objects including journals, books, reviews, claims, images, video, genetic sequences, lab and experimental results, statistical analyses, etc. can be stored and retrieved using a single generic framework based on the open archives initiative standard and Dublin Core metadata. We are also investigating new, interactive search interfaces for more quickly and accurately retrieving information.
The NeoRef project is directed by Dr. Bradley Hemminger in the School of Information & Library Science at UNC-CH.