1,720,975 research outputs found
Strategies for gaining and maintaining academic support for the institutional open access repository
Get PDFThe 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
Creating author-level statistics dashboards in the EPrints repository at QUT
No full textThis presentation shows how QUT’s institutional repository (QUT ePrints) delivers value to authors by collating their their publications on a ‘Browse by person’ view and by linking this view to a statistics dashboard which aggregates and graphs the citation and download data. The author can also export their download and citation data in CSV format for further analysis or to create visualisations for a subset of their works. QUT ePrints provides a range of other usage and attention metrics which can help the author craft a narrative about their research impact. \ud
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Providing the type of usage data authors want encourages them to engage with the repository and provide full-text versions which can be made accessible
Joining the dots : connecting publications with grants, data, and other scholarly outputs
No full textImplementing an enhanced repository statistics system for QUT ePrints
No full textQueensland University of Technology (QUT) was one of the first universities in Australia to establish an institutional repository. Launched in November 2003, the repository (QUT ePrints) uses the EPrints open source repository software (from Southampton) and has enjoyed the benefit of an institutional deposit mandate since January 2004. Currently (April 2012), the repository holds over 36,000 records, including 17,909 open access publications with another 2,434 publications embargoed but with mediated access enabled via the ‘Request a copy’ button which is a feature of the EPrints software. At QUT, the repository is managed by the library.QUT ePrints (http://eprints.qut.edu.au)\ud
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The repository is embedded into a number of other systems at QUT including the staff profile system and the University’s research information system. It has also been integrated into a number of critical processes related to Government reporting and research assessment. Internally, senior research administrators often look to the repository for information to assist with decision-making and planning. While some statistics could be drawn from the advanced search feature and the existing download statistics feature, they were rarely at the level of granularity or aggregation required. Getting the information from the ‘back end’ of the repository was very time-consuming for the Library staff. In 2011, the Library funded a project to enhance the range of statistics which would be available from the public interface of QUT ePrints.\ud
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The repository team conducted a series of focus groups and individual interviews to identify and prioritise functionality requirements for a new statistics ‘dashboard’. The participants included a mix research administrators, early career researchers and senior researchers. The repository team identified a number of business criteria (eg extensible, support available, skills required etc) and then gave each a weighting. After considering all the known options available, five software packages (IRStats, ePrintsStats, AWStats, BIRT and Google Urchin/Analytics) were thoroughly evaluated against a list of 69 criteria to determine which would be most suitable.\ud
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The evaluation revealed that IRStats was the best fit for our requirements. It was deemed capable of meeting 21 out of the 31 high priority criteria. Consequently, IRStats was implemented as the basis for QUT ePrints’ new statistics dashboards which were launched in Open Access Week, October 2011.\ud
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Statistics dashboards are now available at four levels; whole-of-repository level, organisational unit level, individual author level and individual item level. The data available includes, cumulative total deposits, time series deposits, deposits by item type, % fulltexts, % open access, cumulative downloads, time series downloads, downloads by item type, author ranking, paper ranking (by downloads), downloader geographic location, domains, internal v external downloads, citation data (from Scopus and Web of Science), most popular search terms, non-search referring websites. The data is displayed in charts, maps and table format.\ud
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The new statistics dashboards are a great success. Feedback received from staff and students has been very positive. Individual researchers have said that they have found the information to be very useful when compiling a track record. It is now very easy for senior administrators (including the Deputy Vice Chancellor-Research) to compare the full-text deposit rates (i.e. mandate compliance rates) across organisational units. This has led to increased ‘encouragement’ from Heads of School and Deans in relation to the provision of full-text versions
Predatory vs Quality Journals
No full text“Predatory vs Quality journals,” presented by Paula Callan, Scholarly communications Librarian, QUT and Stephanie Bradbury, Research Support Coordinator, QUT. Presented 5 August via Blackboard Collaborate as part of the QULOC Research Support for Library Liaison webinar series. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
QUT repository services underpinning support for open scholarship across the research lifecycle
No full textResearchers are often time-poor and disinterested in the technical underpinnings of the research support services provided by their institution. Understandably, their focus is on completing the task at hand as efficiently (and painlessly) as possible; be it completing a data management plan, finding research datasets, research notetaking, submitting a completed thesis, disseminating research findings, publishing, storing research data, reporting outputs for research assessment or gathering impact data for grants and promotion applications. At Queensland University of Technology (QUT) there is a digital repository ‘under the bonnet’ of many of the services supporting researchers with these tasks. For some services, only one repository is involved but, in other cases, multiple repositories are working together behind the scenes. The objective is to provide a seamless experience for the researchers. Implementing and managing these services necessarily involves partnerships or collaborations between one or more organisation units including; the Library, Information Technology Services, the Office of Research, the Research Students Centre and the faculties (academic departments).\ud
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QUT was one of the first universities in Australia to implement an institutional repository (QUT ePrints) and, in 2003, it became the first in the world to endorse a university-wide policy which required staff to deposit a copy of all new peer reviewed publications. QUT ePrints enjoys strong support from both senior administrators and our community of researchers and has been the highest ranked Australian repository in almost every release of the Webometrics Ranking of Research Repositories. It is currently ranked 13th in the World in the Ranking for Institutional Repositories: http://repositories.webometrics.info/en/top_Inst\ud
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In recent years, additional repository-based services have been implemented to provide support across the research lifecycle. This includes the preparation of data management plans, data archiving and publication, registering the location of code, software and datasets stored in external repositories and the curation of digitised artefacts (including digitised theses and conference proceedings). Currently, QUT is in the process of implementing an Electronic Research Notebook service that will address issues related to notetaking, records mangement, intellectual property, research integrity and data management.\ud
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This poster presents a graphical representation of the research lifecycle overlaid with details of the various digital repositories at QUT and the associated services available to support researchers at each point in the cycle. Text boxes will describes the various partnerships, successes and challenges associated with each of the services.\ud
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Implementing new repository-related services is rarely challenge-free but these challenges are excellent learning opportunities and generally lead, eventually, to success stories. Our experience has been that, to get researcher buy-in, the process of engaging with the service must be simple, supported and, whenever possible, rewarded
Putting the Repository First: Implementing a Repository to RIS Workflow for QUT ePrints
No full textAs one of the first institutional repositories in Australia and the first in the world to have an institution-wide deposit mandate, QUT ePrints has great ‘brand recognition’ within the University (Queensland University of Technology) and beyond. The repository is managed by the library but, over the years, the Library’s repository team has worked closely with other departments (especially the Office of Research and IT Services) to ensure that QUT ePrints was embedded into the business processes and systems our academics use regularly. For example, the repository is the source of the publication information which displays on each academic’s Staff Profile page. The repository pulls in citation data from Scopus and Web of Science and displays the data in the publications records. Researchers can monitor their citations at a glance via the repository ‘View’ which displays all their publications. A trend in recent years has been to populate institutional repositories with publication details imported from the University’s research information system (RIS). The main advantage of the RIS to Repository workflow is that it requires little input from the academics as the publication details are often imported into the RIS from publisher databases. Sadly, this is also its main disadvantage. Generally, only the metadata is imported from the RIS and the lack of engagement by the academics results in very low proportions of records with open access full-texts. Consequently, while we could see the value of integrating the two systems, we were determined to make the repository the entry point for publication data. In 2011, the University funded a project to convert a number of paper-based processes into web-based workflows. This included a workflow to replace the paper forms academics used to complete to report new publications (which were later used by the data entry staff to input the details into the RIS). Publication details and full-text files are uploaded to the repository (by the academics or their nominees). Each night, the repository (QUT ePrints) pushes the metadata for new publications into a holding table. The data is checked by Office of Research staff the next day and then ‘imported’ into the RIS. Publication details (including the repository URLs) are pushed from the RIS to the Staff Profiles system. Previously, academics were required to supply the Office of research with photocopies of their publication (for verification/auditing purposes). The repository is now the source of verification information. Library staff verify the accuracy of the publication details and, where applicable, the peer review status of the work. The verification metadata is included in the information passed to the Office of Research. The RIS at QUT comprises two separate systems built on an Oracle database; a proprietary product (ResearchMaster) plus a locally produced system known as RAD (Research Activity Database). The repository platform is EPrints which is built on a MySQL database. This partly explains why the data is passed from one system to the other via a holding table. The new workflow went live in early April 2012. Tests of the technical integration have all been successful.\ud
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At the end of the first 12 months, the impact of the new workflow on the proportion of full-texts deposited will be evaluated
Strategies for increasing the amount of open access content in your repository
No full textFilling an institutional repository with publication metadata has become relatively simple. In fact, the process can almost be automated these days. But without full-text open access copies, this delivers little additional value to the authors or the institution as the same information is, in most cases, already freely available online. Significant value is added when the repository increases the number of readers for the works by providing access to open access copies. This is likely to increase the academic impact (citations) and broader impact (dissemination to and uptake by wider society) of the institution’s research. QUT’s repository (QUT ePrints) has a proven track record in providing open access research publications as evidenced by 67.5% of the repository records for works published in 2015 having open access (or temporarily embargoed) full-text available. This poster provides a snapshot of the strategies and repository services in place at QUT which are underpinning this
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