Thursday, November 18, 2010

Progress Report - Queen Mary

The battle to launch QMRO goes on here. Frustration is beginning to kick in due not to lack of interest by academics, but actually in our seeming incapacity to reach the end stage. Whilst we have academics really interested in helping to get things moving, not least the Principal himself, we have gotten a little stuck with the final technical issues. Working closely with our IT Services team, we are getting ever closer to launching the repository, something I have been looking forward to for some few years now. Whilst a lot of work has gone into making this happen, we seem to have fallen foul of the summer holiday black hole, when other projects got prioritised, and which (over-running as they always do) meant that we also fell into the start of term black hole immediately afterwards.

However, it's not all bleakness. We're currently working on using the data from PubLists to provide a Publications web site and this is nearing completion at last. With links to the repository and published versions on publisher web sites, this should be a really good way to promote the repository and open access, and therefore drive engagement. Having worked out a few kinks, we're at the stage where we'll be able to launch the site soon and this is really exciting!

I'm currently drafting a communications strategy for QMRO, which will help us to plan our advocacy and training strategy over the coming months and will help to formalise ways of highlighting the work we are doing.

I've also recently attended a meeting with some of the Sherpa-LEAP partners and this has got me thinking about how we can tap into/share knowledge and expertise. So lots to do!

Sarah Molloy (QMUL)

2 comments:

  1. Out of curiosity - are the final technical issues to do with the repository, or the infrastructure surrounding it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi James, it's to do with the mapping of data from the PubLists (Symplectic Elements) database to DSpace. For example, the date issued field is currently populated with the date the item was approved into the repository rather than the publication date which makes a mess of the citation. These shouldn't be difficult to fix but are proving more troublesome than expected.

    The good people at Symplectic and in our IT department are onto it so hopefully it should be resolved soon.

    Sarah Molloy

    ReplyDelete