DROPS in a nutshell...
Dagstuhl has been operating DROPS - the Dagstuhl Research Online Publication Server - since 2004.
As an online publication server, it intrinsically enables very timely publication of and access to recent research results. DROPS complies with all formalities required by a publication server like
- administrating library meta data,
- ensuring long term availability of the documents (assignment of persistent identifiers, archiving will be done by the German National Library).
Furthermore, DROPS offers some additional service like
- very timely dissemination of recent research results,
- enhancing findability of the documents by indexing e.g. at
DBLP and connection to library networks.
The series published via DROPS are
- Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings (DSP)
- Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) and
- Dagstuhl-Follow-Ups .
Additionally, Dagstuhl offers a venue for publication of the proceedings of
and also dissseminates its 
own publications via DROPS, i.e.
Information for Editors / Authors
Kind of publication
A new, high-quality series of international peer-reviewed conference proceedings in informatics is LIPIcs. If you are interested in publishing your proceedings in LIPIcs, please send an application.
Our first series published via DROPS has been Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings. Each volume emerges from a Dagstuhl seminar and the organizers and participants are the editors and authors.
DROPS offers an a publication platform for the results of Dagstuhl Events, too.
For organizers of other, external informatics conferences, the DROPS category External Workshop can be an advantageous platform for publishing the peer reviewed conference proceedings.
Also online journals, books or monographs could be published timely and professionally via DROPS.
Costs
Most publications via DROPS are free of charge, so far.
However, for LIPIcs publications a cost-covering fee will be charged.
Contact for Publication
If you are interested in publishing computer science research results via DROPS, please contact Marc Herbstritt.
Information for the Reader
Access
There are two possible entry points to access documents on DROPS:
- DROPS: Directly browsing and searching the database.
- Portal: This is an exemplary portal for one volume of Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings. Similar portals exist for each proceedings- or conference-volume.
Costs
Access to all documents on DROPS is free of charge.
Some Details about DROPS
Administration
Dagstuhl does not only all the necessary administrative work for the author...
- Collection of all necessary and some additional bibliographic meta data (according to Dublin Core)
- Authors, title, abstract, keywords,...
- Assignment of persistent identifier (for long term access to the document)
- Long-term availability of the documents will be guaranteed by the German National Library which collects all publications, archives them and provides future acces, e.g. by conversion to future formats or virtual machines that simulate present environments in the future.
=> Citability of the document is guaranteed.
Dagstuhl also accomplishes some additional services like
- Indexing at DBLP, the computer science bibliography of Michael Ley, University of Trier,
=> Findability of the documents is enhanced.
Server / Software
DROPS is based on the OPUS software used for the documents- and publication server of the Online Publikationsverbund der Region Stuttgart. OPUS is the result of a research project funded by the German Research Net (Deutsches Forschungsnetz) and the Federal Department of Higher Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung).
Publishing with OPUS means: converting the electronic document to PDF (portable document format) and writing some meta data about it, which will be stored in Dublin Core format using a mSQL-database. Retrieval will therefore have the typical functionality of other well known online databases - different search fields, truncation options, Boolean operators etc. The Library of Congress (LoC), the Online Cataloging Library Center (OCLC) and a number of other national libraries like Die Deutsche Bibliothek (the german national library) are engaged in Dublin Core during several projects. Dublin Core makes it possible to participate in ongoing developments concerning web based search engines and robots.
Format of the Documents
The only file format accepted for publication is currently PDF. This is to ensure long term availability of the document and conversion to future formats as well as conformance to collections of online publications by e.g. the german national library.
