As the popularity of depositing small archives via our new online deposition system ADS-easy has risen, we have come across a couple of examples where depositors have eschewed OASIS in favour of uploading a report to the ADS archive via ADS-easy.
In terms of just depositing data with the ADS that is fine but not really the best practice, and more costly for depositors too!
So how should it work?
If you just have a ‘grey literature’ report for fieldwork undertaken in England or Scotland we would recommend that you use OASIS for three really good reasons:
- By using OASIS you also connect with the local HER and the NMR who are made aware of your work. In contrast to this the primary relationship with ADS-easy is between you, the depositor, and us the ADS.
- By using OASIS to upload the report it is subject to the same archiving procedure as depositing the report by and other means and still ends up in the Grey Literature Library
- Using OASIS is free to upload a single report, ADS-easy is not!
So the message is, always use OASIS; this helps get your fieldwork recorded by the right people in the right places and allows for the free upload of a single grey literature report.
Even if you have additional archive (images, CAD files, spreadsheets etc) and are required or want to deposit it with the ADS via the ADS-easy system, then you should still use OASIS for recording the event. Once you start to use ADS-easy you can insert the OASIS id for the project’s field work record and it will help populate ADS-easy so you work is not wasted or duplicated .
Put simply:
- OASIS lets people know about your fieldwork and you can upload one report for free.
- ADS-easy is for the rest of the digital archive and is a paid-for service.