Lessons Learned in Partnerships and Practice: Adopting Open Source Institutional Repository Software

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Author:  Amy Leigh Allen

INTRODUCTION

After the establishment of the University Archives at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, it became apparent that processes needed to be established for collecting, preserving, and providing access to born-digital materials.

The University Archivist established partnerships across multiple departments within the Libraries and with faculty and staff of colleges, schools, and administrative units across campus to test open source repository software and develop collections to fulfill this need.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

This case study examines three specific projects and workflows providing access to digital undergraduate honors theses, university serials, and music concert recordings. Lessons learned during the project include the success strategies for partnership formation along with the identification of project processes that need improvement, such as promotion and long term preservation.

NEXT STEPS AND CONCLUSIONS 

The campus has transitioned to a proprietary system for the official institutional repository. However, the pilot projects examined in this study filled intermediate needs: providing a group of files and metadata for the official institutional repository and helping the Libraries to evaluate the sustainability of open source platforms.

Staff gained experience and identified areas where improvement was needed. However, the most successful aspect of the project was establishing partnerships that will carry over to the new repository.

URL : Lessons Learned in Partnerships and Practice: Adopting Open Source Institutional Repository Software

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2170

Workflow Development for an Institutional Repository in an Emerging Research Institution

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Authors: Jeanne Hazzard, Stephanie Towery

INTRODUCTION

This paper describes the process librarians in the Albert B. Alkek Library at Texas State University undertook to increase the amount of faculty publications in their institutional repository, known as the Digital Collections.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Digital Collections at Texas State University is built on a DSpace platform and serves as the location for electronic theses and dissertations, faculty publications, and other digital Texas State University materials. Despite having launched the service in 2005, the amount of faculty work added to the repository has never been at the levels initially hoped for on launch.

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE WORKFLOW

Taking a proactive and cooperative approach, a team of librarians developed and piloted a workflow, in which library staff would retain the already established protocol of gaining faculty permissions prior to uploading material while respecting publisher copyright policies.

RESULTS

Prior to the vita project, the repository archived 305 faculty publications total. Fifty-seven were added during the pilot, which represents an 18.5% increase. Of a total of 496 articles, seventeen titles were found in the blue category, which allows publisher pdfs to be archived.

The majority of articles (233) were found in the green category, which allows either a pre- or a post-print copy of an article to be archived. One hundred ten of the identified titles were in the yellow and white journal categories, representing 22% of our total, and the team was able to archive only five of these. Finally, 16% (81) were not found in the SHERPA/ RoMEO database (color-coded beige). Only 18 of these articles were archived.

ASSESSMENT

We discovered that our faculty retain nearly none of their pre-print or post-print versions of their published articles, and so we are unable to archive those titles in the repository. Nearly 47% of the articles found were in green journals that allow only pre- or post-print copies.

Most faculty were unable to produce versions of their work other than the publisher’s PDF, which many publishers restrict from upload into a repository.

URL : Workflow Development for an Institutional Repository in an Emerging Research Institution

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2166

The development of a research data policy at Wageningen University & Research: best practices as a framework

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Authors: Hilde van Zeeland, Jacquelijn Ringersma

The current case study describes the development of a Research Data Management policy at Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands. To develop this policy, an analysis was carried out of existing frameworks and principles on data management (such as the FAIR principles), as well as of the data management practices in the organisation.

These practices were defined through interviews with research groups. Using criteria drawn from the existing frameworks and principles, certain research groups were identified as ‘best-practices’: cases where data management was meeting the most important data management criteria.

These best-practices were then used to inform the RDM policy. This approach shows how engagement with researchers can not only provide insight into their data management practices and needs, but directly inform new policy guidelines.

URL : The development of a research data policy at Wageningen University & Research: best practices as a framework

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10215

Fostering Data Openness by Enabling Science: A Proposal for Micro-Funding

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Author: Brian Rappert

In recent years, the promotion of data sharing has come with the recognition that not all scientists around the world are equally placed to partake in such activities. Notably, those within developing countries are sometimes regarded as experiencing hardware infrastructure challenges and data management skill shortages.

Proposed remedies often focus on the provision of information and communication technology as well as enhanced data management training. Building on prior empirical social research undertaken in sub-Sahara Africa, this article provides a complementary but alternative proposal; namely, fostering data openness by enabling research.

Towards this end, the underlying rationale is outlined for a ‘bottom-up’ system of research support that addresses the day-to-day demands in low-resourced environments. This approach draws on lessons from development financial assistance programs in recent decades.

In doing so, this article provides an initial framework for science funding that call for holding together concerns for ensuring research can be undertaken in low-resourced laboratory environments with concerns about the data generated in such settings can be shared.

URL : Fostering Data Openness by Enabling Science: A Proposal for Micro-Funding

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-044

Ethics approval in applications for open-access clinical trial data: An analysis of researcher statements to clinicalstudydatarequest.com

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Authors : Derek So, Bartha M. Knoppers

Although there are a number of online platforms for patient-level clinical trial data sharing from industry sponsors, they are not very harmonized regarding the role of local ethics approval in the research proposal review process.

The first and largest of these platforms is ClinicalStudyDataRequest.com (CSDR), which includes over three thousand trials from thirteen sponsors including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi, and Bayer. CSDR asks applicants to state whether they have received ethics approval for their research proposal, but in most cases does not require that they submit evidence of approval.

However, the website does require that applicants without ethical approval state the reason it was not required. In order to examine the perspectives of researchers on this topic, we coded every response to that question received by CSDR between June 2014 and February 2017.

Of 111 applicants who stated they were exempt from ethics approval, 63% mentioned de-identification, 57% mentioned the use of existing data, 33% referred to local or jurisdictional regulations, and 20% referred to the approvals obtained by the original study.

We conclude by examining the experience of CSDR within the broader context of the access mechanisms and policies currently being used by other data sharing platforms, and discuss how our findings might be used to help clinical trial data providers design clear and informative access documents.

URL : Ethics approval in applications for open-access clinical trial data: An analysis of researcher statements to clinicalstudydatarequest.com

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184491

Effectiveness of Anonymization in Double-Blind Review

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Authors : Claire Le Goues, Yuriy Brun, Sven Apel, Emery Berger, Sarfraz Khurshid, Yannis Smaragdakis

Double-blind review relies on the authors’ ability and willingness to effectively anonymize their submissions. We explore anonymization effectiveness at ASE 2016, OOPSLA 2016, and PLDI 2016 by asking reviewers if they can guess author identities.

We find that 74%-90% of reviews contain no correct guess and that reviewers who self-identify as experts on a paper’s topic are more likely to attempt to guess, but no more likely to guess correctly.

We present our findings, summarize the PC chairs’ comments about administering double-blind review, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of revealing author identities part of the way through the process, and conclude by advocating for the continued use of double-blind review.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01609

We’ve failed: Pirate black open access is trumping green and gold and we must change our approach

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Author : Toby Green

Key points

Sci-Hub has made nearly all articles freely available using a black open access model, leaving green and gold models in its dust.

 Why, after 20 years of effort, have green and gold open access not achieved more? Do we need ‘tae think again’?

 If human nature is to postpone change for as long as possible, are green and gold open access fundamentally flawed?

 Open and closed publishing models depend on bundle pricing paid by one stakeholder, the others getting a free ride. Is unbundling a fairer model?

If publishers changed course and unbundled their product, would this open a legal, fairer route to 100% open access and see off the pirates?

URL : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1116/full