Advocacy session at Exeter

I forgot to mention in my previous blog that we recently gave a presentation on our research repository, ERIC, to Associate Directors of Research at Exeter. We discovered there was quite a low level of awareness of the repository and what it’s for – for example, that depositing in the repository often allows a researcher to fulfil his/her obligation to the research funder. They were interested to hear about the integration with Symplectic and generally in favour of it (although some still queried the amount of time it would take to deposit). This led on to a discussion about Open Access and the feasibility of imposing a mandate for both research publications and primary data. There was a lot of support for a mandate but also recognition that a change in culture, especially in certain disciplines, would be necessary for it to work. The Open Access agenda will, again, be picked up and taken forward by the Open Up! project mentioned previously.

Jill Evans

University of Exeter

EPSRC mandate - working closely with Research Office staff

Research Office staff can play an important role in publicising repository deposit. The relationship between repository staff and research support staff is a key one which should be nurtured. It's great that we have direct research support representation on the RePosit team (Ellie from Keele) as this brings an important different perspective to our work - but also provides a good route to information which may naturally come the way of the Research Office but may or may not make it as far as the Library. The recent EPSRC mandate is a good example. The EPSRC open access policy is not new, but it has been revised recently. There is a prominent and imminent date on the policy which has made institutions sit up and take notice (true of EPSRC's open access publication policy and their data management policy). There's some interesting psychology in that. In addition, the EPSRC has written to all University VCs to publicise their policy.

From a deposit/RePosit point of view at the University of Leeds, the Research Office has take the opportunity to publicise the EPSRC policy on the staff intranet and in a direct email to all EPSRC grant holders. We (repository staff) were able to confirm deposit via Symplectic meets the green route requirements and we provided relevant text for the email to grant holders. Because the EPSRC policy is flexible and allows recipients to choose whether to comply via the gold route or green self-archiving route, we can gave a straightforward message to grant hodlers. Yes, deposit into White Rose Research Online meets your funder requirements. There is no cost to you . Here's how you do it. The EPSRC email provided a great way to reach academics directly and show our relevance to them - and to work closely with our Research Office. Whether it will have a significant impact on deposit - we'll see!

A Queen Mary update

In recent weeks, the repository here at Queen Mary has been having a bit of work done 'under the bonnet'. In preparation for a proposed official launch during this month of 'May-ing', we have upgraded DSpace from version 1.5.2 to version 1.6.2, and upgraded Repository Tools into the bargain. Top marks to the IT guru for having achieved this without a hitch (he was somewhat smug).

Elsewhere in Research Publications world at QM, we have recently launched a public 'shop window' of our research output. Research Publications will eventually link to Queen Mary Research Online, is already automatically updated every day (overnight) and is proving somewhat popular with our academics and administrators alike who want to link to it from department websites. We'll be monitoring the traffic to/through this site over the coming weeks and months to see what impact it has on exposing research outputs more widely, and whether it too could drive engagement with Open Access.

In a related matter, we are now working with departments to provide data from PubLists (our local name for the Symplectic Elements system) to departments to populate their own academic web pages. This is a very big deal here, with lots of academic staff keen to have this set up quickly (no pressure then). Again, this will provide a direct link to full content in QMRO, so this could be an additional driver for engagement but it's early days at the moment.

The major focus for me over May and June is to begin seriously promoting and advocating: Open Access, self deposit, repositories and in particular QMRO, using the model that we've adopted here to demonstrate the ease with which this can be achieved.

Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary, University of London)

RSP winter school

The RSP winter school took place 9-11th February in the Lake District and was my first Repository Support Project event. I wanted to use the opportunity, as a new repository manager, to immerse myself in the repository world, meet other repository colleagues and to inform my work both here at the University of Plymouth and for RePosit.

Some of the main points I took away to reflect on:

• the variety of models eg commercial / in house, CRIS, no CRIS, standalone or connected repository. From one point of view, this means that there are less HEIs, then I thought, to share experience with but on the other hand, it also means that interest should be generated around the RePosit model and others can share and use the project partner's experiences.

• the concept of a shared CRIS, feeding to multiple repositories is another more unusual feature of the UoP setup and again other HEIs may wish to share our experiences

• discussions around the CRIS-repository model changing the concept of the IR (institutional repository) as an entity in itself and what you are promoting and whether that represents a challenge or an opportunity for repository managers. My personal view is that here at UoP, I will be promoting both the CRIS and the IR both in different ways to different stakeholder groups.

I liked the concept of the 3 components of deposit, use and advocacy:

1. Deposit - seamless deposit via the CRIS.
2. Access/preserve/report/feed - Senior management and research administrators - CRIS and IR
3. Discover - via the CRIS via the university's staff profile pages and the IR via search engines

So both the CRIS and IR will be promoted, just in different ways depending on the stakeholder and their interests. I feel, the RePosit model doesn't relegate the IR as an entity, the advocacy programme will communicate the benefits/uses of both the CRIS and the IR but in a targeted way and both will have a strong identity.

• Discussions around self deposit and mediation. UoP is launching with a self deposit model. Most of the HEIs appeared to using a mediated module. For RePosit, this means that the role of research administrators needs to be considered in the survey and advocacy materials

• advocacy themes - a key message was that advocacy needs to be sustained and repeated.

The message about "the researchers want to know what they can get out of deposit" resonated with me, and this echoed what the pilot presentations at Leeds fedback. Personally I feel that maybe the message of pure Open Access may resonate with some committed individuals but I feel that at UoP, I will be starting by advocating OA but badging it more as Open Access Lite so focusing on what depositing means for individuals and access to collaborators, peers and practitioners. This is promoting OA but in a context that researchers respond to. In time, as the IR matures, the message will develop, especially with further developments in OA. I believe that OA Lite is the most effective way to reach researchers to launch deposit whilst starting discussions which look at the full range of the OA concept with senior managers.

The event was very informative and enjoyable and I have returned with lots of contacts, ideas and most importantly, it has confirmed and underpinned the directions that I will take in the advocacy here at Plymouth.


Nicola Cockarill, Senior Subject Librarian, University of Plymouth

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)

Conversation with Pablo de Castro

I had a very interesting conversation with Pablo de Castro about the Sonex initiative last Wednesday (6th October 2010). Our discussion centred around crossover in research between our two projects into ways of depositing into repositories from other information sources, and this how model of deposit could be used as an advocacy tool.

Pablo and I discussed whether we might approach advocacy in different ways, not just in the context of a specific audience but also to the content itself; for example, would the emphasis of any advocacy materials need to be different if all publications data were to be deposited into a repository, including metadata-only records, as opposed to full text only?

We discussed the slow uptake of deposit to repositories in Spain, and how it was hoped that initiatives and projects like ours might help to engage more researchers and demonstrate the benefits of repositories, and the ease with which content can be deposited using different sources to automate and facilitate metadata creation and file upload.

We also talked at the new BioMed Central Automated Article-Deposit feed which uses the SWORD protocol to deposit content automatically into institutional repositories from BioMed Central, increasing deposit to compliant repositories, and decreasing workload for repository staff.

For me, this was particularly interesting because it threw up questions about whether this model would work with our own deposit model. Could these models be made to work together, and indeed should they? Thoughts?

It was a fascinating conversation, serving to highlight for me how the same issues around engagement are repeated, regardless of country. A big thanks to Pablo for taking the time to speak to me, before heading off to the 10th Rebiun Workshop (for those of you able to read Spanish!). It was a real pleasure.

Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary, University of London)

Literature Review: Embedding repositories in research management systems and processes

Overview of project:

The project was undertaken to identify ‘successful models for embedding repositories in research management systems and processes’. The initial project was intending to identify examples of integration of computerised systems, but it found none that had succeeded in a complete integration, with many still relying on separate systems or a mixture of automated computerised systems and manual processes. Five case studies are reviewed, with the following outcomes.

The integration of repositories with research management systems and processes:

• needs to ensure that all stakeholders are identified, in particular research managers and administrative staff
• offers an opportunity for combined advocacy between the academic community and supporting services, linking to core strategic aims of the university
• should have a demonstrable usefulness for academics and other stakeholders
• needs to be deeply embedded into research publications processes and/or cycles

Advocacy tools: none identified

1Linton, H (2008). Embedding Repositories in Research Management Systems and Processes [online]. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitalrepositories2007/reposrmsystems.aspx [accessed 02/08/2010]


Posted by: Sarah Molloy (QMUL)