RSP EPrints Training Day

On 19th January RSP in association with EPrints ran a training event on the EPrints repository software. We were deliberately aiming the training at institutions that already had a repository up and running so that the focus could be on managing and customising the repository rather than the installation process.

UDORA Briefing Day

The RSP team recently took part in a briefing day organised by the  University of Derby to kick off a pilot project for their new Open Access Repository, UDORA.

Richard Finch, Academic Services Manager for the University Library, welcomed everyone and provided us with the background to the project. Jackie Wickham from RSP provided an overview of Open Access, our colleague, Jane Smith from   Romeo and  Juliet then introduced to ROMEO and JULIET and described how they can be used to identify what is required by in relation to making  publications Open Access and also the policies of publishers in relation to this.  Copyright issues and publisher’s policies had been identified as a primary concern for participants going into the briefing day and they seemed pleasantly surprised to hear that many publishers allow some form of Open Access deposit.

In addition to the contributions from RSP, ROMOE and JULIET the briefing day also included a session from BioMed Central Open Repository who gave a walkthrough of the Open Repository software that participants in the Pilot would be using.

As a new member of the  RSP team it was really interesting to hear the concerns of academics in relation to Open Access firsthand, and I was very pleased to note the enthusiasm with which the attendees engaged with the both the benefits of depositing their work in an Open Access Repository and also the challenges to doing so. The event was quite informal and questions were welcomed throughout the event.  Questions revealed the natural concerns of the academics dealing with the issues surrounding Open Access, many for the first time. One questioner was concerned that providing Open Access to his publications prior to publication might encourage plagiarism, or the appropriation of their underlying idea.  This led to an interesting discussion which concluded that providing any access to your research (through traditional publishing models or Open Access) opens you up to these risks, but depositing pre-prints could allow you to stake your claim earlier in the process and actually help to tackle this issue. Other questions focused on copyright issues and publisher policies and participants were encouraged to make use of  JISC’s copyright toolbox and the ROMEO and JULIET services. Discussion wasn’t limited to obstacles however, and during the break I joined some early career researchers enthusing about the potential citations implications for Open Access and the moral issues surrounding opening up research.

As a new member of the team I found this event to be a really interesting introduction to the RSP project and the issues and challenges our community face on a day to day basis.  I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the pilot project and progress of the UDORA repository and wish the team there every success!

For further information regarding the UDORA Repository please contact Melanie Keady:

m.e.keady@derby.ac.uk

Nature Publishing announce new Open Access journal

Have a look at this post from Bill Hubbard about a signifcant development in journal publishing. Bill heads up the Centre for Research Communications (where the RSP project is housed).

Guest post by Jackie Proven – Increasing repository content at St Andrews using MERIT data.

In 2010 the University of St Andrews implemented a new Research Information System (RIS) called PURE and we began developing strategies for increasing the full text content in our repository. Like most institutions we use various techniques such as presenting at staff events and enabling administrators to make deposits. We knew that getting good quality research outputs from high profile staff would help champion the cause, and so our Library Director suggested looking at the database of RAE 2008 submissions produced by the MERIT project.

The fact that the metadata has been enhanced with publisher details and the main ROMEO conditions means it has proved to be a valuable resource. The database can be easily searched and downloaded for further analysis, and you can then target content in various ways. One possible workflow which I have tried is:

• Search the database and download as Excel file
• Deduplicate using ja_ID  (journal article unique ID which is generated for each author)
• Add columns for author email and deposit date
• Filter by “PVersionPermittedInIr” (Publisher version you can deposit) to see articles that allow Publisher’s pdf
• Filter further by publisher and check ROMEO*
• Email relevant researchers with a bit of blurb about open access and offer to deposit these outputs on their behalf, suggesting at the same time they could add author versions of other publications.
• Deposit the full text (which in our case just means adding the file to the metadata already in PURE, and validate for transfer to the repository).

While it’s possible to find this data in other ways, the MERIT database is a nice tidy solution. Starting with RAE2008 data provides confidence when viewing your repository as a showcase. Working with a batch of outputs from one publisher certainly speeds up the copyright-checking part of the deposit process. (*Given ongoing discussion about the detail of publisher policies including the distinction between websites and repositories, some people may be happy to take the data at face value; some may want to read the ROMEO detail or full policy.)

We have also extended the workflow to look for other content using our RIS metadata. Having this visibility of authors, research outputs and related activity is very helpful to our advocacy efforts. As well as increasing content, it is proving to be a valuable way to start dialogue with our researchers.

For further details contact Jackie Proven, email: jep10@st-andrews.ac.uk