Output – IncReASe: Final Report – self archiving rates

Title: IncReASe Final Report

Pages: 10-11

Date Released: 30 April 2009
URI for Output: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/increase/increase_finalreportv1.pdf

Summary of contents:
“It is often stated that, worldwide, the spontaneous level of self-archiving is around 10-15% (i.e. about 15% of published articles are made openly available by their authors).[Harnard (2006), Björk, B-C., Roosr, A. & Lauri, M. (2008)] We found similar levels of archiving: 16% of questionnaire respondents link to local, open copies of their work; 19% link to external copies – though often these are not openly accessible. Having said this, much of the self-archived content on web sites is working papers, reports and conference papers; the % of published journal papers spontaneously self-archived (on personal web sites or in any repository) by White Rose authors is likely to be lower than 15%. Of course, there is considerable variation between subject disciplines. This highlights the immediate potential value of open access repositories but also, perhaps, underlines the scale of the cultural change required – even after several years of institutional repository development – to engage researchers in active dissemination of their outputs.”

Comments:
This provides further evidence for the percentile statistics of self-archiving. One consequence of this figure (even within a now established repository) is the challenge faced by instituions seeking to comply with funder’s deposit manadates.

Project – RSP

Project Name: Repositories Support Project

Short Project Name:RSP

Programme Name: Repositories and Preservation

Strand:

JISC Project URI:  http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/reppres/repsupport.aspx

Project URI: http://www.rsp.ac.uk

Start Date: October 2006

End Date: March 2009

Governance:JISC IIE

Contact Name and Role:  Bill Hubbard (Project Manager)

Brief project description:

The Repository Support Project (RSP) is a 2.5 year project to co-ordinate and deliver good practice and practical advice to English and Welsh HEIs to enable the implementation, management and development of digital institutional repositories.

Name of Trawler: Mahendra Mahey

Outputs: (just link to individual output postings) as a bulleted list

Output – UHRA – Self Archiving Support Materials

Title: UHRA repository self-archiving support materials

Date Released: Unknown

URI for Output: http://uhra.herts.ac.uk/uhra/promotion.html

Summary of contents:

Contains useful information on the process of self-archiving including how the submission process works and issues such as copyright, rights and permissions.

Additional information:

Comments:

At http://uhra.herts.ac.uk/uhra/promotion.html

Output – UHRA – Training Sessions

Title: UHRA repository self-archiving training sessions

Date Released: May to July 2008

URI for Output: http://uhra.herts.ac.uk/uhra/news.html

Summary of contents:

Evidence of delivery of training outputs. Materials not available

Additional information:

Comments:

Output – VIF:The results of the VIF user requirements study – formats

Title: VIF:The results of the VIF user requirements study

Pages: webpage (summary of http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/vif/Versioning_Issues_-_Discussion_Paper.doc)
Date Released:

URI for Output: http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/vif/Problem/research.html

Summary of contents:
“There is an awareness by information professionals of a trend towards a wider range of object types being created. When asked what types of material they currently stored in their repositories, 95.4% of information professionals claimed that they currently store, or plan to store, text documents with many also stating that they store, or plan to store, audio files (73.6%), datasets (77.9%), images (83.3%), learning objects (46.5%) and video files (75.3%). This can be seen to be especially positive, especially in the context of the results of the academics survey, which suggested a large number of researchers either already create or intend to create audio files (47.2%), datasets (68%), images (72.5%), learning objects (74.6%) and video files (57.6%). As expected, the vast majority also intend to continue working with text documents.”

Comments:
Survey data about snapshot of content types stored by repositories and content types created by academics; it provides one comparasion between current ‘supply’ (what can be stored) and ‘demand’ (what users want to store) which informs the sector.

The figures for non-textual materials being (or about to be stored) by repositories seem quite high given comparable stats from OpenDOAR:

From: OpenDOAR

Output – KULTUR – Institutional Profile: University College for the Creative Arts

Title: Institutional Profile: University College for the Creative Arts
Number of pages or page numbers: pp 6-7
Section: Summation

Date Released: 27th March 2008

URI for Output: http://kultur.eprints.org/docs/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20UCCA%20profile%208%20April%20online%20version.pdf

Summary of contents:

A few observations of interest w.r.t. repositories for the arts in the ‘summation’ section of the report:

“The project will need to engage, advocate and secure ‘buy-in’ from the academic community. It will be important to establish an understanding of the culture of each college so that local differences or requirements can be taken into account. We will need to create a network of contact with key individuals and interest groups across the institution with which to communicate and gain direction on the project. Following on from this it will be imperative to be able to understand, interpret and communicate the range of differing concerns with the project team so that development is accurately representative.”

Additional information:

Comments:

Output – KULTUR – Environmental Assessment of the University of the Arts, London

Title: Environmental Assessment of the University of the Arts, London
Number of pages or page numbers: pp 6-7
Section: Summary

Date Released: 8th April 2008

URI for Output: http://kultur.eprints.org/docs/UUAL%20profile%208%20april%20online%20version.pdf

Summary of contents:

The summary section has a few useful observations w.r.t. repositories in the Arts sector:

“The opportunities for a repository at UAL are great since there is a wealth of research
being produced at all levels within the University. At the same time the sheer amount of
research and research active staff can present its own problems. The targeting of key
research staff, the enlisting of research centres/units and the research offices are
essential for the success of the project. Advocacy from the top and from the bottom is
needed but this can only really be effective by establishing good relationships and links
with relevant University bodies and staff. We need to identify just what a repository can
do for each group and advocate along those lines … Populating the demonstrator with a good number of pieces of research will help the project become more attractive and viable to research staff. The interface and the software itself will also play a large part in any success.”

Additional information:

Comments:

Project – VIF

Project Name: Version Identification Framework

Short Project Name:       VIF

Brief project description:
” Continuing from the work of the VERSIONS project the project will provide a common infrastructure for the naming and understanding of issues relating to versions of scholarly works.
The results of an online survey of repository users about current use of digital objects and about the versioning questions that arise will be used to inform a draft framework, to be developed through an expert working group comprising of members from the project partners and other key stakeholders.
The Version Identification Framework will be recommended to the JISC and digital repository communities through a community acceptance plan and a dissemination campaign. ”

Outputs:

• The Problem and a working definition of ‘version’ – http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/vif/Problem/index.html
• Version Identification Framework – recommendations and solutions http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/vif/Framework/index.html
  

Programme Name: Repositories and Preservation Programme

Strand: Discovery to Delivery

JISC Project URI: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/reppres/vif.aspx

Project URI: http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/vif/

Start Date: 2007-07-10

End Date: 2008-05-09

Governance:

Contact Name and Role: Jenny Brace, Project manager

Name of Trawler: John

Output – The Depot – Service and Project Websites

Title: Depot websites providing a full range of supporting documentation

Date Released: June 2007

URI for Outputs:

http://depot.edina.ac.uk/FAQ/ and

http://deposit.depot.edina.ac.uk/cgi/users/home?screen=Items

Summary of contents:

FAQ section on the project website and ‘manage deposits’ section of the service website.

Additional information:

Comments:

There’s a significant amount of overlap between the project and service websites for the Depot, and the repository itself, so I’ve just listed both websites here. The FAQ section is the main area where supporting documentation is provided on the project website along with the ‘manage deposits’ section of the repository service website.

Output – CURVE – Final Report:FE to HE transition and repositories

Title: JISC Final Report – CURVE

Page:5

Summary of contents:
Discussing part of the project examining the
“development of the student experience and repository resources to support a more seamless progression from FE to HE from a student perspective.

The main repository resources that were considered as beneficial following a consultation exercise were:

• A lecturers’ web where CU lecturers express their academic expectations of students joining CU courses of study. In conjunction with this an area where Warwickshire College lecturers outline their academic expectations and levels of support offered to students on WC courses.
• A student web where first year students from CU outline their experiences at joining University course and how this differs from their experiences at Warwickshire College (there is an ideal opportunity to identify these differences with students on the Foundation Degree Motorsports course, the majority of whom continue with CU for a full degree)
• A generic student web outlining the key elements of living and studying at Coventry University and how they differ from the Warwickshire College experiences.”

Comments:
This outlines some of the key tools and functions that the project has found to support the first year transition from FE to HE. It is of note that none of these are core repository functions and frankly likely to be much better supported by other platforms. It is of course true that such web sites and other resources could (and for completeness possibly should) be catalogued and recorded in the repository, but if the repository is being pitched as a way to discover or manage these resources (which all appear to be critical student induction resources) I think there’s a problem with how we’re understanding the place of a repository.

I think this is illustrates the importance of the balance between repositories and other tools thinking not just in terms of their capabilities but how they fit into teaching practice. Conversely it illustrates that though there may be benefits to having all the information in a single place – this is not in itself an automatic benefit.

Date Released: August 2008

URI for Output: http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/curve/files/2008/10/curve_final_report.doc