Student Embargoes within Institutional Repositories: Faculty Early Transparency Concerns

Libraries encourage students to utilize Institutional Repositories (IRs) to house e-portfolios that demonstrate their skills and experiences. This is especially important for students when applying for jobs and admission into graduate schools. However, within the academic sphere there are legitimate reasons why some faculty-student collaboration efforts should not be documented and openly shared in institutional repositories. The need for the protection of ideas and processes prior to faculty publication can be in direct conflict with the intention for institutional repositories to promote the excellent efforts of students.

This is certainly true in laboratory situations where details of experiments and research areas are guarded for the lifetime of the exploration process. Librarians must work with others to develop guidelines and educational programs that prepare all stakeholders for these new information release considerations. One outcome of such deliberations could be the development of mutually beneficial publication guidelines which protect sensitive details of research yet allow students to submit selective research documentation into an IR.

The other extreme, with no agreed upon partial embargo scenarios, could result in the removal of students from sensitive collaborations. Given the need for scientific laboratories to utilize student workers, and the benefit of real research experiences for students, the academy must find a balanced solution to this inherent conflict situation.

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss2/6/

Institutional Repository Management Models That Support Faculty Research Dissemination

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Purpose – Research dissemination is a core mission for all universities. As a result, libraries should adopt this mission, utilizing institutional repositories services to support this goal. This paper aims to explore management models that institutional repositories can use for this purpose.

Design/methodology/approach – By using research dissemination as a primary objective, individual management models are reviewed for their ability to accomplish this goal. Institutional repository services resulting from this purpose are also described.

Findings – By adopting these kinds of models, libraries can develop new services that go beyond traditional library services and provide key support for the dissemination of a university’s scholarship.

Originality/value – This article challenges the existing ideology surrounding institutional repositories and helps frame these services as a core component for fulfilling an important university mission.

URL : http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/lib_facpubs/95/

Open Is Not Enough : Grey Literature in Institutional Repositories

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“The paper contributes to the discussion on the place of grey literature in institutional repositories and, vice versa, on the relevance of open archives for grey literature. Even in an open environment, grey literature needs specific attention and curation. Institutional repositories don’t automatically provide a solution to all problems of grey literature.

Our paper shows some scenarios of what could or should be done. The focus is on academic libraries. The paper is based on a review of international studies on grey literature in open archives. Empirical evidence is drawn from an audit of the French repository IRIS from the University of Lille 1 and from ongoing work on the development of this site.

The study includes a strategic analysis in a SWOT format with four scenarios. Based on this analysis, the paper provides a set of minimum requirements for grey items in institutional repositories concerning metadata, selection procedure, quality, collection management and deposit policy.

The communication is meant to be helpful for the further development of institutional repositories and for special acquisition and deposit policies of academic libraries.”

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00908862

The Choice Is Yours Researchers Assign Subject Metadata…

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The Choice Is Yours! Researchers Assign Subject Metadata to Their Own Materials in Institutional Repositories :

“The Digital Commons platform for institutional repositories provides a three-tiered taxonomy of academic disciplines for each item submitted to the repository. Since faculty and departmental administrators across campuses are encouraged to submit materials to the institutional repository themselves, they must also assign disciplines or subject categories for their own work. The expandable drop-down menu of about 1,000 categories is easy to use, and facilitates the growth of the institutional repository and access to the materials through the Internet.”

URL : http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/library_pubs/31/

Institutional Repositories The Untapped Academic Goldmine This…

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Institutional Repositories: The Untapped Academic Goldmine :

“This paper looked at the influence of the Internet on scholarly communication and the emergence of various access-to knowledge initiatives, with stronger emphasis on institutional repositories (IRs). It highlighted the benefits of IRs and the efforts made by Redeemer’s University (RUN) towards the implementation of RUNIR. It concluded that Nigerian universities stand to benefit tremendously from IR if they take up the challenges of understanding its features and implementing it.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/19355/

Strategies for gaining and maintaining academic support for…

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Strategies for gaining and maintaining academic support for the institutional open access repository :

“The impact of research can be measured by use or citation count. The more widely available that research outputs are; the more likely they are to be used, and the higher the impact. Making the author-manuscript version of research outputs freely available via the institutional repository greatly increases the availability of research outputs and can increase the impact.
QUT ePrints, the open access institutional repository of research outputs at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia, was established in 2003 and is managed by the QUT Library. The repository now contains over 39,000 records. More than 21,000 of these records have full-text copies attached as result of continuous effort to maintain momentum and encourage academic engagement. The full-text deposit rate has continued to increase over time and, in 2012 (August, at the time of writing), 88% of the records for works published in 2012 provide access to a full-text copy.
Achieving success has required a long term approach to collaboration, open access advocacy, repository promotion, support for the deposit process, and ongoing system development. This paper discusses the various approaches adopted by QUT Library, in collaboration with other areas of the University, to achieve success.
Approaches include mainstreaming the repository via having it report to the University Research and Innovation Committee; regular provision of deposit rate data to faculties; championing key academic supporters; and holding promotional competitions and events such as during Open Access Week.
Support and training is provided via regular deposit workshops with academics and faculty research support groups and via the provision of online self-help information. Recent system developments have included the integration of citation data (from Scopus and Web of Science) and the development of a statistical reporting system which incentivise engagement.”

URL : http://eprints.qut.edu.au/59212/

Opening access to agricultural information in Ghana Kenya…

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Opening access to agricultural information in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia :

“Agricultural innovation systems in Africa need to have access to both local and global agricultural sciences and technical information if they are to have an impact on agriculture and food security initiatives on the continent. While access to global agricultural information resources and innovations is relatively easy, local agricultural content is generally not visible and easily accessible. Providing access these important resources, through institutional repositories of metadata records and associated full-text documents, is one pathway of ensuring that the content generated locally is easily accessible within the country, region and around the globe. This paper highlights three initiatives implemented by national research institutes in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia aimed at opening access to agricultural information and knowledge resources. It also presents the major challenges faced in the implementation of the initiatives and the key lessons learned that could be useful when implementing similar initiatives.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18921/