What's happening at Exeter

We still don’t have a definite date for the roll out of Repository Tools here but crosswalks and collection mapper seem to be working so we’re almost ready for testing with users, hopefully starting next week or the week after.

An important breakthrough for us is that automated emailing of depositors notifying them that their submission has either been approved or rejected is now working. Thanks to Ian Wellaway for his hard work on this – if anyone else is interested we’d be happy to share what we (or rather Ian) did.

I’ve started planning advocacy activities in more detail in the hope that we have to be ready to go some time soon.

• We’ve identified a number of testers from different subject areas – the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences are particularly keen as the new EPSRC open access ruling means they have to put all their funded research publications on OA starting September.
• I’m having a series of meetings with the Academic Support Consultants to plan advocacy in the Colleges from September – hoping to get a clear picture of what they are able to do, to whom, when, and what supporting materials they will need me to create for them (adapting RePosit materials).
• We’ve been invited to give a presentation to Associate Deans of Research in mid-September – a really great opportunity initiated by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Knowledge Transfer, who is a real supporter of OA. These are obviously key people when it comes to influencing researchers in the various Colleges.
• I’m aiming for a big repositories push during OA Week in October, plugging RT using RePosit materials at various events that I’m in the process of planning.
• Have started work on an OA web site to be launched in OA week.
• Seeing our design studio this week to talk about commissioning some UoE repository leaflets – to be used alongside the RePosit materials.
• Started work on a Library ‘repositories@exeter’ web page providing a single point of access to repositories & Repository Tools, news, events, training materials, advice etc. – currently info is buried in the Library pages and difficult to find – this r@e link will appear prominently on the Library home page: http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/
• Working on content for a new course for PGRs ‘Getting yourself known: how to enhance your research profile’ – this will include a demo of Repository Tools.
• Will be doing training with Academic Support Consultants after testing is completed.
• Have started to use Twitter to alert people to repository developments.

We'll be doing more, but this is just to start with – I’ll post more as we start to make progress. If anyone has any comments or suggestions please let me know: jill.evans@exeter.ac.uk

posted by: Jill Evans