Managing an institutional repository workflow with GitLab and a folder-based deposit system

Authors : Whitney R. Johnson-Freeman, Mark E. Phillips, Kristy K. Phillips

Institutional Repositories (IR) exist in a variety of configurations and in various states of development across the country. Each organization with an IR has a workflow that can range from explicitly documented and codified sets of software and human workflows, to ad hoc assortments of methods for working with faculty to acquire, process and load items into a repository.

The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries has managed an IR called UNT Scholarly Works for the past decade but has until recently relied on ad hoc workflows. Over the past six months, we have worked to improve our processes in a way that is extensible and flexible while also providing a clear workflow for our staff to process submitted and harvested content.

Our approach makes use of GitLab and its associated tools to track and communicate priorities for a multi-user team processing resources. We paired this Web-based management with a folder-based system for moving the deposited resources through a sequential set of processes that are necessary to describe, upload, and preserve the resource.

This strategy can be used in a number of different applications and can serve as a set of building blocks that can be configured in different ways. This article will discuss which components of GitLab are used together as tools for tracking deposits from faculty as they move through different steps in the workflow.

Likewise, the folder-based workflow queue will be presented and described as implemented at UNT, and examples for how we have used it in different situations will be presented.

URL : https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/15650

Centering Accessibility: A Review of Institutional Repository Policy and Practice

Authors : Talea Anderson, Chelsea Leachman

INTRODUCTION

Libraries have proposed institutional repositories as a means of providing universal access to university research. However, in recent years, it has become clear that universities and libraries have neglected web accessibility in constructing services including open access publishing programs.

METHODS

To better understand accessibility practices in relation to institutional repositories, survey responses were collected from repository managers. The survey consisted of five multiple choice and two open-ended questions regarding remediation and accessibility practices used by repository managers.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION

While the importance of accessibility has been well documented, survey responses showed that few policies and practices have been put in place to ensure accessibility in institutional repositories. Key barriers to accessibility included lack of organizational resources, lack of time, inadequate training, and product restrictions.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that accessibility should be prioritized in future creation of policies and allocation of library resources.

URL : Centering Accessibility: A Review of Institutional Repository Policy and Practice

DOI : https://jlsc-pub.org/articles/abstract/10.7710/2162-3309.2383/

Institutional Repositories for Public Engagement : Creating a Common Good Model for an Engaged Campus

Authors : Erik A. Moore, Valerie M. Collins, Lisa R. Johnston

Most higher-education institutions strive to be publicly engaged and community centered. These institutions leverage faculty, researchers, librarians, community liaisons, and communication specialists to meet this mission, but they have largely underutilized the potential of institutional repositories.

Academic institutions can use institutional repositories to provide open access and long-term preservation to institutional gray literature, research data, university publications, and campus research products that have tangible, real-world applications for the communities they serve.

Using examples from the University of Minnesota, this article demonstrates how making this content discoverable, openly accessible, and preserved for the future through an institutional repository not only increases the value of this publicly-engaged work but also creates a lasting record of a university’s public engagement efforts and contributes to the mission of the institution.

URL : Institutional Repositories for Public Engagement : Creating a Common Good Model for an Engaged Campus

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21900/j.jloe.v1i1.472

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

Author : Hui Zhang

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.

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

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8020028

Open access and research dissemination in Africa

Authors : Katie Wilson, Anthony Kiuna, Richard Lamptey, Susan Veldsman, Lucy Montgomery, Cameron Neylon, Richard Hosking, Karl Huang, Alkim Ozaygen

This paper discusses research undertaken by the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) and participants during and following an Open Knowledge international workshop held in Mauritius in September 2019.

The workshop brought together key experts to explore the role of open knowledge in the creation of equitable and inclusive global knowledge landscapes.

This paper explores the role of open access and institutional repositories in knowledge sharing and the dissemination of research output from higher education and research institutions within the African continent.

The paper reviews the landscape of research output from the African continent; analyses open access research output, overviews of institutional knowledge sharing positions and the dissemination of research output from Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544891

The impact of institutional repositories: a systematic review

Authors : Michelle R. Demetres, Diana Delgado, Drew N. Wright

Objective

Institutional repositories are platforms for presenting and publicizing scholarly output that might not be suitable to publish in a peer-reviewed journal or that must meet open access requirements.

However, there are many challenges associated with their launch and up-keep. The objective of this systematic review was to define the impacts of institutional repositories (IRs) on an academic institution, thus justifying their implementation and/or maintenance.

Methods

A comprehensive literature search was performed in the following databases: Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE, the Cochrane Library (Wiley), ERIC (ProQuest), Web of Science (Core Collection), Scopus (Elsevier), and Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (EBSCO). A total of 6,593 citations were screened against predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Results

Thirteen included studies were divided into 3 areas of impact: citation count, exposure or presence, and administrative impact. Those focusing on citation count (n=5) and exposure or presence (n=7) demonstrated positive impacts of IRs on institutions and researchers.

One study focusing on administrative benefit demonstrated the utility of IRs in automated population of ORCID profiles.

Conclusion

Based on the available literature, IRs appear to have a positive impact on citation count, exposure or presence, and administrative burden. To draw stronger conclusions, more and higher-quality studies are needed.

URL : The impact of institutional repositories: a systematic review

Original location : http://jmla.pitt.edu/ojs/jmla/article/view/856

Integration of a National E-Theses Online Service with Institutional Repositories

Authors : Vasily Bunakov, Frances Madden

We present an information resource prototype that was developed by the FREYA project for the integration of a national e-thesis service and institutional repositories supported by a large national laboratory.

The integration allows us to mutually enrich the metadata in the e-thesis service and institutional repositories with new entities and attributes, and can offer novel ways of reasoning over research outcomes that are supported by direct funding and funding-in-kind by large research facilities.

The integrated information resource can be presented as a labeled-property graph for its exploration with a declarative query language and visualizations. We emphasize the role of persistent identifiers (PIDs), including for entities that are currently not necessarily or not consistently assigned PIDs.

URL : Integration of a National E-Theses Online Service with Institutional Repositories

Alternative location : https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/8/2/20/htm