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Establishing an Institutional Repository A UNISA Case Study…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Establishing an Institutional Repository: A UNISA Case Study :

« The purpose of the paper is to share and learn about the roles of Academic Libraries with reference to the establishment of the Institutional Repository as a mechanism which can benefit scholars to expose their work, putting the institution at the level where-in its research output can
be evaluated and accessed by their peers. The institutional repository provides opportunity for citations, providing an opportunity for the required expose to other web based access tools. It can provide an alternative to the conventional publishing channel. The paper will focus on the practical experience of the UNISA library as a result of the implementation of the Institutional Repository through a pilot project.

UNISA, as an international university with its vision “Towards the African University in the service of humanity” has comprehensive and valuable research output by its academics. The institutional repository is a tool which can benefit scholars to expose their work and putting the
institution at the level where in its research out can be evaluated and accessed by their peers. The
institutional repository provides opportunity for citations, publication which is free, providing an opportunity for the required expose to other web based access tools.

One of UNISA’s strategic objectives is to implement an institutional repository, starting with the pilot project in 2008. This decision has created a positive platform for the library to utilize the
skills available to create a repository for the research output for UNISA. UNISA library has embarked on a pilot project to establish an institutional repository as a vehicle to expose its academic research output in a coherent manner. There are challenges in the process which require further debates on the benefits this platform would bring to both the university and individual academics. There is still a lot of mistrust, resistance and lack of skills from academics. Unless the information is shared, debates and workshops are held on the benefits from putting ones work on the institutional repository, African researchers will continue to aspire to exposure outside Africa. Institutional repositories can provide the platform to electronic journals, with a bigger potential if co-ordinated through the academic institutions to have the African market of
researchers more exposed, thus building our own African research output. The benefit of this is to
disseminate the research of African academics.

An overview of the role the Library plays in creation and establishing the Institutional repository will be provided. Information will be shared with the colleagues who wish to establish an Institutional Repository, while also providing an opportunity to learn how to utilize the tool to benefit researchers who are challenged, in terms of publishing their work. The academic libraries in higher education are willing to assist in establish a platform through the institutional repository, which is available through any internet.

The paper will conclude by highlighting some solutions to ensure that the research work of academics is exposed to the world. It will also provide an alternative to start providing access for potential articles which can get into the “international journals”. It will tell the UNISA library
story. »

URL : http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/4297

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Funding for Sustainability How Funders’ Practices Influence the…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources :

« Over the past decade, philanthropic organizations and government agencies have invested millions of dollars, pounds, and euros in the creation of digital content in the not-for-profit sector. Their grants have facilitated major digitization efforts and encouraged innovative scholarly work possible only in an online environment. Still, the path from initial grant funding to long-term sustainability of these resources can be challenging.

Ithaka S+R, with generous support from the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, interviewed more than 80 individuals, including representatives from more than 25 funding bodies in Europe and North America with a focus on digital resources in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors. Through a year-long research process, Ithaka S+R observed a rich range of sustainability planning activities, but also identified areas for improvement in the funding process that are valuable to both funders and grant seekers. The report also offers funders and project leaders a high-level process for working together at the proposal stage to set plans for post-grant sustainability. »

URL : http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/funding-for-sustainability

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The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009 :

« Open Access (OA) is a model for publishing scholarly peer reviewed journals, made possible by the Internet. The full text of OA journals and articles can be freely read, as the publishing is funded through means other than subscriptions. Empirical research concerning the quantitative development of OA publishing has so far consisted of scattered individual studies providing brief snapshots, using varying methods and data sources. This study adopts a systematic method for studying the development of OA journals from their beginnings in the early 1990s until 2009. Because no comprehensive index of OA articles exists, systematic manual data collection from journal web sites was conducted based on journal-level data extracted from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Due to the high number of journals registered in the DOAJ, almost 5000 at the time of the study, stratified random sampling was used. A separate sample of verified early pioneer OA journals was also studied. The results show a very rapid growth of OA publishing during the period 1993–2009. During the last year an estimated 191 000 articles were published in 4769 journals. Since the year 2000, the average annual growth rate has been 18% for the number of journals and 30% for the number of articles. This can be contrasted to the reported 3,5% yearly volume increase in journal publishing in general. In 2009 the share of articles in OA journals, of all peer reviewed journal articles, reached 7,7%. Overall, the results document a rapid growth in OA journal publishing over the last fifteen years. Based on the sampling results and qualitative data a division into three distinct periods is suggested: The Pioneering years (1993–1999), the Innovation years (2000–2004), and the Consolidation years (2005–2009). »

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961;jsessionid=4113A80C11E4025D98E160C2D7BCFB7D.ambra01

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Open Access Publishing: What Authors Want

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Campus-based open access author funds are being considered by many academic libraries as a way to support authors publishing in open access journals. Article processing fees for open access have been introduced recently by publishers and have not yet been widely accepted by authors.

Few studies have surveyed authors on their reasons for publishing open access and their perceptions of open access journals. The present study was designed to gauge the uptake of library support for author funding and author satisfaction with open access publishing.

Results indicate that York University authors are increasingly publishing in open access journals and are appreciative of library funding initiatives. The wider implications of open access are discussed along with specific recommendations for publishers.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2011/06/10/crl-203.abstract

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The Impact of the Internet on Information Searching and Demand for Traditional Information Resources

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Internet is an efficient information search tool whose growth may have caused a structural change in information search and acquisition behaviors.

This study investigates the effects of growing Internet accessibility on these behaviors. Using U.S. public library circulation counts to quantify changes in the use of information resources, the analysis indicates that greater Internet accessibility contributes to increased demand for traditional information sources.

That is, a complementary relationship exists between Internet and traditional sources. Further, the results suggest that limiting Internet access can reduce the demand for traditional content. These outcomes imply that improvements in Internet accessibility can have profound effects on human capital development.

URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1856056

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How should editors respond to plagiarism? COPE discussion paper

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

This paper aims to stimulate discussion about how editors should respond to plagiarism. Different types of plagiarism are described in terms of their: extent, originality of the copied material, context, referencing, intention, author seniority, and language. Journal responses to plagiarism are also described including: educating authors, contacting authors’ institutions, issuing corrections, and issuing retractions. The current COPE flowcharts recommend different responses to major and minor plagiarism. Possible, more detailed, definitions of these are proposed for discussion. Decisions about when to use text-matching software are also outlined. The appendix describes other systems for classifying plagiarism and links to related documents and resources.

URL : http://www.publicationethics.org/files/COPE_plagiarism_discussion_%20doc_26%20Apr%2011.pdf

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AgriDrupal : repository management integrated into a content management system

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

One of the main obstacles towards a more efficient management and sharing of agricultural knowledge is the lack of good standard-compliant tools whose adoption and maintenance is really sustainable. In particular, in the implementation of repositories, agricultural Institutions have often faced some common issues in the selection of appropriate software tools, like the need to integrate a repository search and browse interface with their website, the need to implement custom content models, or custom metadata models, and the need to be able to exchange information with other systems and participate in networks. The proposed poster will describe AgriDrupal, a “suite of solutions” for agricultural information management and dissemination, with special functionalities for repository management, built on the Drupal Content Management System.

These solutions are provided, discussed and tested by different Institutions and individuals who are sharing their experiences in the AgriDrupal community. Besides being available as modular solutions for Drupal, AgriDrupal can also be delivered as a full-fledged information management and dissemination tool putting together the best solutions implemented by the members of the community. This tool can be considered a “reference demo package”, it is not a software tool that the community maintains or gives assistance for: it is a normal Drupal installation with a customized configuration and special modules, and support for Drupal and its modules can be found directly in the Drupal community.

This is one of the reasons why AgriDrupal is a sustainable project. Indeed the focus of the project is on sustainability: beside minimizing maintenance issues by leaving the bulk of maintenance to the community of Drupal developers, the adoption of AgriDrupal does not involve writing code in house or contracting a company, it leverages the open source approach and the wide community behind the tool, therefore benefitting from continuous improvements and upgrades to the latest technological developments. In addition, the features are not just developed ad hoc: the tool allows to handle all common needs of information management and is easily customizable to specific needs: the definition of metadata models, display criteria and browse/search functionalities can be done through an administration panel, and consequently it doesn’t require highly skilled IT capacities.

The AgriDrupal reference tool has advanced features for managing open access repositories in compliance with widely adopted library standards and the OAI-PMH protocol. The document repository features include: a) a cataloguing interface that out of the box provides the most commonly used metadata elements in bibliographic databases, in particular those defined by the Agris Application Profile , but is easily extendable to include any other element;
b) internal authority lists for authors (personal and corporate), journals and conferences;
c) special input interface for subject indexing with the Agrovoc thesaurus;
d) search and browse functionalities;
e) exposure of records through the OAI-PMH protocol, implementing the Dublin Core metadata set;
f) exposure of records also as RDF feed and XML file: the XML file is compliant with the above mentioned Agris AP, while RDF feeds can be customized in order to include properties from any vocabulary, thus making the repository fully interoperable – the use of Agrovoc URIs also linking it to a published Linked Open Data (LOD) triple store;
g) extensible import and harvesting functionalities that also facilitate the exchange of information with other Institutions and the building of networks.

Since it can be very easily extended to manage any information type according to any metadata standard, AgriDrupal allows to easily integrate a document repository with a website and more in general with an integrated information system. The current 0.7.3 release of AgriDrupal manages documents, news, events, vacancies, institutions, experts and of course web pages. The resulting integrated information system exposes RDF feeds for each type of information managed in the system, and the vocabularies and properties used in the RDF output can be customized, thus making an AgriDrupal installation a potential Linked Data provider.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15768