Category Archives: oa.case.repositories

Toward Easy Deposit: Lowering the Barriers of Green Open Access with Data Integration and Automation

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Abstract:  This article describes the design and development of an interoperable application that supports green open access with long-term sustainability and improved user experience of article deposit. The lack of library resources and the unfriendly repository user interface are two significant barriers that hinder green open access. Tasked to implement the open access mandate, librarians at an American research university developed a comprehensive system called Easy Deposit 2 to automate the support workflow of green open access. Easy Deposit 2 is a web application that is able to harvest new publications, to source manuscripts on behalf of the library, and to facilitate self-archiving to a university’s institutional repository. The article deposit rate increased from 7.40% to 25.60% with the launch of Easy Deposit 2. The results show that a computer system can implement routine tasks to support green open access with success. Recent developments in digital repository provide new opportunities for innovation, such as Easy Deposit 2, in supporting open access. Academic librarians are vital in promoting “openness” in scholarly communication, such as transparency and diversity in the sharing of publication data.

 

Web Accessibility in the Institutional Repository: Crafting User-Centered Submission Policies

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“As web accessibility initiatives increase across institutions, it is important not only to reframe and rethink policies, but also to develop sustainable and tenable methods for enforcing accessibility efforts. For institutional repositories, it is imperative to determine the extent to which both the repository manager and the user are responsible for depositing accessible content. This presentation allows us to share our accessibility framework and help repository and content managers craft sustainable, long-term goals for accessible content in institutional repositories, while also providing openly available resources for short-term benefit.

Indiana University’s institutional repository, IUScholarWorks, audited the accessibility of its existing content and created policies to encourage accessible submissions. No established workflows considering accessibility existed when this audit took place, and no additional resources were allocated to facilitate this shift in focus. As a result, the Scholarly Communication team altered the repository submission workflow to encourage authors to make their finished documents accessible with limited intervention.

We identified a spectrum of accessibility services, ranging from applying nascent accessibility practices to implementing long term solutions. When initiating new policies, responsibility for accessibility will often fall more heavily upon the user, while ideal practices aim to be more collaborative in nature. Initially, instead of concentrating resources on retroactively deleting non-accessible content, we focused on our submission process, which we believe emphasizes the importance of depositing accessible documents. We created guidelines that allow users to add basic accessibility improvements without needing to significantly restructure or rewrite their document. Our guidelines provide “quick fixes” that authors can easily implement to their finished documents prior to submission, including adding structural tags and alt text, clearly labeling lists, and identifying document language. Moving forward, we aim to implement ideal accessibility standards for deposited work, regardless of format or origin.”

Web Accessibility in the Institutional Repository: Crafting User-Centered Submission Policies

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“As web accessibility initiatives increase across institutions, it is important not only to reframe and rethink policies, but also to develop sustainable and tenable methods for enforcing accessibility efforts. For institutional repositories, it is imperative to determine the extent to which both the repository manager and the user are responsible for depositing accessible content. This presentation allows us to share our accessibility framework and help repository and content managers craft sustainable, long-term goals for accessible content in institutional repositories, while also providing openly available resources for short-term benefit.

Indiana University’s institutional repository, IUScholarWorks, audited the accessibility of its existing content and created policies to encourage accessible submissions. No established workflows considering accessibility existed when this audit took place, and no additional resources were allocated to facilitate this shift in focus. As a result, the Scholarly Communication team altered the repository submission workflow to encourage authors to make their finished documents accessible with limited intervention.

We identified a spectrum of accessibility services, ranging from applying nascent accessibility practices to implementing long term solutions. When initiating new policies, responsibility for accessibility will often fall more heavily upon the user, while ideal practices aim to be more collaborative in nature. Initially, instead of concentrating resources on retroactively deleting non-accessible content, we focused on our submission process, which we believe emphasizes the importance of depositing accessible documents. We created guidelines that allow users to add basic accessibility improvements without needing to significantly restructure or rewrite their document. Our guidelines provide “quick fixes” that authors can easily implement to their finished documents prior to submission, including adding structural tags and alt text, clearly labeling lists, and identifying document language. Moving forward, we aim to implement ideal accessibility standards for deposited work, regardless of format or origin.”

Institutional Repository Movement in Turkey and the case of Istanbul Aydin University

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ANKOS (The Anatolian University Libraries Consortium) established Open Access and the institutional Repositories Working Group(OAIRWG) in order to raise awareness on Open Access (OA) and Institutional Repositories (IRs) among information Professionals in Turkey. Ankara University is one of the first Open Access initiatives in Turkey. Over seven hundred and fifty scientific papers produced by faculty members have been self-archived (http://acikarsiv.ankara.edu.tr/) and made accessible to public since the beginning of 2006. The ‘Hacettepe University Electronic Theses Project’ has been carried to make the full-texts of graduate theses and dissertations accessible through the internet. In September 2003, The Middle East Technical University Library Theses and Dissertation Archive was established and since then students have been submitting their theses in electronic format to their IRs’ system. Because of these good practices, We started to establish our own institutional repositories. Istanbul Ayd?n University Institutional Repositorie (IAUIR) contains valuable scientific contents like articles, proceedings, visual materials, poster sessions, books and book chapters etc.

Social engagement and institutional repositories: a case study

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Abstract:  This article explores the community reach and societal impact of institutional repositories, in particular Griffith Research Online (GRO), Griffith University’s institutional repository. To promote research on GRO, and to encourage people to click through to the repository content, a pilot social media campaign and some subsequent smaller social media activities were undertaken in 2018. After briefly touching on these campaigns, this article provides some reflections from these activities and proposes options for the future direction of social engagement and GRO in particular, and for institutional repositories in general. This undertaking necessitates a shift in focus from repositories as a resource for the scholarly community to a resource for the community at large. The campaign also highlighted the need to look beyond performance metrics to social media metrics as a measure of the social and community impact of a repository.

Whilst the article is written from one Australian university’s perspective, the drivers and challenges behind researchers and universities translating their research into economic, social, environmental and cultural impacts are national and international. The primary takeaway message is for libraries to take more of a proactive stance and to kick-start conversations within their institutions and with their clients to actively partner in creating opportunities to share research.

bioRxiv: Trends and analysis of five years of preprints – Anderson – – Learned Publishing – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  bioRxiv was founded on the premise that publicly posting preprints would allow authors to receive feedback and submit improved papers to journals. This paper analyses a number of trends against this stated purpose, namely, the timing of preprint postings relative to submission to accepting journals; trends in the rate of unpublished preprints over time; trends in the timing of publication of preprints by accepting journals; and trends in the concentration of published, reviewed preprints by publisher. Findings show that a steady c.30% of preprints remain unpublished and that the majority is posted onto bioRxiv close to or after submission – therefore giving no time for feedback to help improve the articles. Four publishers (Elsevier, Nature, PLOS, and Oxford University Press) account for the publication of 47% of bioRxiv preprints. Taken together, it appears that bioRxiv is not accomplishing its stated goals and that authors may be using the platform more to establish priority, as a marketing enhancement of papers, and as functional Green OA, rather than as a community?driven source of prepublication review.

 

IRs in America: “Land of the F IRs in America: “Land of the Free” or “F ” or “Free Online Access”

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A slide presentation by Paul Royster at the International Association of Technological University Libraries, IATUL Seminar 2019, Gda?sk University of Technology Library, Gda?sk, Poland, December 10, 2019.

Internal Collaboration: Using the IR to Build a Promotion and Tenure Package

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“At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, world-class experts conduct cutting-edge air and space research, and the Library works diligently to capture and share all the unique work through their institutional repository. When the Chief Information Officer asked library staff for help creating a Promotion and Tenure tool to better serve faculty looking to advance, librarians Debra Rodensky and Chip Wolfe knew they had the technology, all the content of the IR and the strong campus relationships to make it happen. Join Debra and Chip on December 11 for a webinar on the Library’s collaboration with IT and the library’s relationships with faculty through the tenure and promotion process. Topics will include:

– The historical relationship between the Library, its IR and the IT department at Embry-Riddle
– The changing culture of promotion and tenure on campus
– Challenges and successes of building a tool to meet the needs of both IT and faculty….”

Testing the Future of Self-Archiving – openaccessbutton

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“Self-archiving has a reputation for causing confusion. With shareyourpaper.org, we are working to streamline the process, since, like anyone who has ever had to explain the difference between publisher’s proofs and preprints knows, that reputation for confusion is well-earned. Upsetting that reputation requires mechanizing as much of the process as possible. It also requires user testing. I want to share some of what we’re learning from user testing, and shareyourpaper.org’s all-new workflows for your feedback….”

Testing the Future of Self-Archiving – openaccessbutton

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“Self-archiving has a reputation for causing confusion. With shareyourpaper.org, we are working to streamline the process, since, like anyone who has ever had to explain the difference between publisher’s proofs and preprints knows, that reputation for confusion is well-earned. Upsetting that reputation requires mechanizing as much of the process as possible. It also requires user testing. I want to share some of what we’re learning from user testing, and shareyourpaper.org’s all-new workflows for your feedback….”

CURRENT STATUS OF THE INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY AT THE SOUTH EASTERN UNIVERSITY OF SRI LANKA

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Abstract:  DSpace is an open-source software which is the most popular and cost-effective tool to build digital repositories. There are 15 Sri Lankan institutional repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) platform. OpenDOAR is the global directory of academic open access repositories. The present study mainly focuses on the current status of the Institutional Repository at the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (SEUIR). The study further attempts to compare SEUIR with other listed institutional repositories in OpenDOAR of Sri Lanka. The data were extracted from the statistics calculated through DSpace open source software and analysed for the necessary information. The study highlights the current status of SEUIR and further developments to improve the accessibility of contents to the viewers.

CURRENT STATUS OF THE INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY AT THE SOUTH EASTERN UNIVERSITY OF SRI LANKA

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Abstract:  DSpace is an open-source software which is the most popular and cost-effective tool to build digital repositories. There are 15 Sri Lankan institutional repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) platform. OpenDOAR is the global directory of academic open access repositories. The present study mainly focuses on the current status of the Institutional Repository at the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (SEUIR). The study further attempts to compare SEUIR with other listed institutional repositories in OpenDOAR of Sri Lanka. The data were extracted from the statistics calculated through DSpace open source software and analysed for the necessary information. The study highlights the current status of SEUIR and further developments to improve the accessibility of contents to the viewers.

“Collaborating Across Campus to Advance Open Access Policy Compliance” by Andrew Johnson, Melissa Cantrell et al.

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In 2018, the Data and Scholarly Communication Services Unit (DSCS) at the University of Colorado Boulder began implementing two open access (OA) policy workflows with the aim of increasing content in the institutional repository CU Scholar, expanding awareness of the campus OA policy that was passed in 2015, and decreasing the burden on researchers for participation in the policy. DSCS leveraged collaborative relationships with other library departments and campus units in order to mobilize the data, infrastructure, procedures, and documentation to execute these workflows. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) workflow identifies existing open access publications by CU Boulder faculty and mediates deposit in order to make them available in CU Scholar. The liaison outreach workflow partners with liaison librarians to request from faculty preprints and author’s final manuscripts of publications in which the publisher version may have copyright restrictions. At present, the DOAJ workflow has resulted in 754 articles deposited in CU Scholar, and the liaison outreach workflow has resulted in 91 articles deposited. Each of these workflows pose challenges that have required flexibility, experimentation, and clear communication between stakeholders. This case study, which includes detailed descriptions of both open access policy workflows, initial results, and plans for future implementation, may serve as a guide for other institutions wishing to adopt and/or adapt institutional repository workflows and forge collaborative relationships to further open access initiatives in their local context.

Case study: Doing more with ORCID – UK ORCID Support

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“The University of Cambridge research repository (Apollo), uses ORCID IDs as a unique identifier for researchers.  When a researcher submits a dataset to Apollo, a DOI is minted for the dataset through the DataCite service.   By including the ORCID in the metadata submitted to DataCite, DataCite then populates the ORCID registry entry for the researcher (with their permission) with information about the dataset, using an ‘auto-update’ feature. 

The result is that a link is created between the researcher and their data, through the ORCID ID identifying the researcher, and the DOI for the data assigned by DataCite. The persistent identifiers are used to connect researchers and their achievements, improving visibility and discoverability across different systems.  The workflow reduces duplication of effort in entering information and avoids input or identification errors….”

bioRxiv: the preprint server for biology | bioRxiv

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Abstract:  The traditional publication process delays dissemination of new research, often by months, sometimes by years. Preprint servers decouple dissemination of research papers from their evaluation and certification by journals, allowing researchers to share work immediately, receive feedback from a much larger audience, and provide evidence of productivity long before formal publication. Launched in 2013 as a non-profit community service, the bioRxiv server has brought preprint practice to the life sciences and recently posted its 64,000th manuscript. The server now receives more than four million views per month and hosts papers spanning all areas of biology. Initially dominated by evolutionary biology, genetics/genomics and computational biology, bioRxiv has been increasingly populated by papers in neuroscience, cell and developmental biology, and many other fields. Changes in journal and funder policies that encourage preprint posting have helped drive adoption, as has the development of bioRxiv technologies that allow authors to transfer papers easily between the server and journals. A bioRxiv user survey found that 42% of authors post their preprints prior to journal submission whereas 37% post concurrently with journal submission. Authors are motivated by a desire to share work early; they value the feedback they receive, and very rarely experience any negative consequences of preprint posting. Rapid dissemination via bioRxiv is also encouraging new initiatives that experiment with the peer review process and the development of novel approaches to literature filtering and assessment.