Étiquette : open repositories

Opening Up Open Access Institutional Repositories to Demonstrate Value: Two Universities’ Pilots on Including Metadata-Only Records

Authors: Karen Bjork, Rebel Cummings-Sauls, Ryan Otto

INTRODUCTION

Institutional repository managers are continuously looking for new ways to demonstrate the value of their repositories. One way to do this is to create a more inclusive repository that provides reliable information about the research output produced by faculty affiliated with the institution.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

This article details two pilot projects that evaluated how their repositories could track faculty research output through the inclusion of metadata-only (no full-text) records.

The purpose of each pilot project was to determine the feasibility and provide an assessment of the long-term impact on the repository’s mission statement, staffing, and collection development policies.

NEXT STEPS

This article shares the results of the pilot project and explores the impact for faculty and end users as well as the implications for repositories.

URL : Opening Up Open Access Institutional Repositories to Demonstrate Value: Two Universities’ Pilots on Including Metadata-Only Records

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2220

When a Repository Is Not Enough: Redesigning a Digital Ecosystem to Serve Scholarly Communication

Authors : Robin R. Sewell, Sarah Potvin, Pauline Melgoza, James Silas Creel, Jeremy T. Huff, Gregory T. Bailey, John Bondurant, Sean Buckner, Anton R. duPlessis, Lisa Furubotten, Julie A. Mosbo Ballestro, Ian W. Muise, Brian J. Wright

INTRODUCTION

Our library’s digital asset management system (DAMS) was no longer meeting digital asset management requirements or expanding scholarly communication needs.

We formed a multiunit task force (TF) to (1) survey and identify existing and emerging institutional needs; (2) research available DAMS (open source and proprietary) and assess their potential fit; and (3) deploy software locally for in-depth testing and evaluation.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

We winnowed a field of 25 potential DAMS down to 5 for deployment and evaluation. The process included selection and identification of test collections and the creation of a multipart task based rubric based on library and campus needs assessments.

Time constraints and DAMS deployment limitations prompted a move toward a new evaluation iteration: a shorter criteria-based rubric.

LESSONS LEARNED

We discovered that no single DAMS was “just right,” nor was any single DAMS a static product. Changing and expanding scholarly communication and digital needs could only be met by the more flexible approach offered by a multicomponent digital asset management ecosystem (DAME), described in this study.

We encountered obstacles related to testing complex, rapidly evolving software available in a range of configurations and flavors (including tiers of vendor-hosted functionality) and time and capacity constraints curtailed in-depth testing.

While we anticipate long-term benefits from “going further together” by including university-wide representation in the task force, there were trade-offs in distributing responsibilities and diffusing priorities.

NEXT STEPS

Shifts in scholarly communication at multiple levels—institutional, regional, consortial, national, and international—have already necessitated continual review and adjustment of our digital systems.

URL : When a Repository Is Not Enough: Redesigning a Digital Ecosystem to Serve Scholarly Communication

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2225

Improving the discoverability and web impact of open repositories: techniques and evaluation

Author : George Macgregor

In this contribution we experiment with a suite of repository adjustments and improvements performed on Strathprints, the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, institutional repository powered by EPrints 3.3.13.

These adjustments were designed to support improved repository web visibility and user engagement, thereby improving usage. Although the experiments were performed on EPrints it is thought that most of the adopted improvements are equally applicable to any other repository platform.

Following preliminary results reported elsewhere, and using Strathprints as a case study, this paper outlines the approaches implemented, reports on comparative search traffic data and usage metrics, and delivers conclusions on the efficacy of the techniques implemented.

The evaluation provides persuasive evidence that specific enhancements to technical aspects of a repository can result in significant improvements to repository visibility, resulting in a greater web impact and consequent increases in content usage.

COUNTER usage grew by 33% and traffic to Strathprints from Google and Google Scholar was found to increase by 63% and 99% respectively. Other insights from the evaluation are also explored.

The results are likely to positively inform the work of repository practitioners and open scientists.

URL : https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/14180

La coopération entre l’archive ouverte HAL AMU et les Presses universitaires de Provence : une dynamique au service de la science ouverte et de la bibliodiversité

Auteurs/Authors : Isabelle Gras, Charles Zaremba

Cette collaboration s’inscrit dans le cadre de la politique soutenue par la gouvernance d’AMU en faveur de l’open access, qui a notamment permis le déploiement de l’archive ouverte institutionnelle HAL AMU (Bertin, 2014).

URL : https://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/4982 

Online Safety and Academic Scholarship: Exploring Researchers’ Concerns from Ghana

Authors: Kodjo Atiso, Jenna Kammer

INTRODUCTION

This paper investigates factors, including fears of cybercrime, that may affect researchers’ willingness to share research in institutional repositories in Ghana.

METHODS

Qualitative research was conducted to understand more about the experiences of Ghanaian researchers when sharing research in institutional repositories. Interviews were conducted with 25 participants, documents related to policy and infrastructure in Ghana were examined, and observations were held in meetings of information technology committees.

FINDINGS

The findings indicate that researchers are specifically concerned about three areas when sharing research online: fraud, plagiarism, and identity theft.

DISCUSSION

This paper adds to research that examines barriers toward using institutional repositories, and highlights the lack of basic preventative strategies in Ghana—such as training, security, and infrastructure that are commonplace in developed countries.

CONCLUSION

This study draws on findings from Bossaller and Atiso (2015) that identified fears of cybercrime as one of the major barriers to sharing research online for Ghanaian researchers.

While several other studies have found that fear of identity theft or plagiarism are barriers toward sharing work in the institutional repository, this is the first study that looks specifically at the experiences researchers have had with cybercrime to understand this barrier more fully.

URL : Online Safety and Academic Scholarship: Exploring Researchers’ Concerns from Ghana

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2263

Preprints in Scholarly Communication: Re-Imagining Metrics and Infrastructures

Authors : B. Preedip Balaji, M. Dhanamjaya

Digital scholarship and electronic publishing among the scholarly communities are changing when metrics and open infrastructures take centre stage for measuring research impact. In scholarly communication, the growth of preprint repositories over the last three decades as a new model of scholarly publishing has emerged as one of the major developments.

As it unfolds, the landscape of scholarly communication is transitioning, as much is being privatized as it is being made open and towards alternative metrics, such as social media attention, author-level, and article-level metrics. Moreover, the granularity of evaluating research impact through new metrics and social media change the objective standards of evaluating research performance.

Using preprint repositories as a case study, this article situates them in a scholarly web, examining their salient features, benefits, and futures. Towards scholarly web development and publishing on semantic and social web with open infrastructures, citations, and alternative metrics—how preprints advance building web as data is discussed.

We examine that this will viably demonstrate new metrics and in enhancing research publishing tools in scholarly commons facilitating various communities of practice.

However, for the preprint repositories to sustain, scholarly communities and funding agencies should support continued investment in open knowledge, alternative metrics development, and open infrastructures in scholarly publishing.

URL : Preprints in Scholarly Communication: Re-Imagining Metrics and Infrastructures

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7010006

Tracking the popularity and outcomes of all bioRxiv preprints

Authors : Richard J. Abdill, Ran Blekhman

Researchers in the life sciences are posting their work to preprint servers at an unprecedented and increasing rate, sharing papers online before (or instead of) publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Though the popularity and practical benefits of preprints are driving policy changes at journals and funding organizations, there is little bibliometric data available to measure trends in their usage.

Here, we collected and analyzed data on all 37,648 preprints that were uploaded to bioRxiv.org, the largest biology-focused preprint server, in its first five years. We find that preprints on bioRxiv are being read more than ever before (1.1 million downloads in October 2018 alone) and that the rate of preprints being posted has increased to a recent high of more than 2,100 per month.

We also find that two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints posted in 2016 or earlier were later published in peer-reviewed journals, and that the majority of published preprints appeared in a journal less than six months after being posted.

We evaluate which journals have published the most preprints, and find that preprints with more downloads are likely to be published in journals with a higher impact factor. Lastly, we developed Rxivist.org, a website for downloading and interacting programmatically with indexed metadata on bioRxiv preprints.

URL : Tracking the popularity and outcomes of all bioRxiv preprints

Alternative location : https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/13/515643