Project Plan post 1: Aims, Objectives and Final Outputs

The RePosit Project is motivated by the desire to take advantage of the reduction or removal of the significant barriers to repository deposit gained by using a web-based repository deposit tool embedded in a researcher-facing publications management system: to push for academics to deposit their content seamlessly into their institution's open access repository, and to embed deposit of research outputs into the research lifecycle, creating a successful feedback loop.

Project work will include gathering feedback from users and administrators and evaluating the tool's effectiveness; developing general strategies for increasing uptake of embedded deposit tools; compiling a community commentary on the issues surrounding research management system integration; and producing open access training materials to help institutions enlighten their users and administrators regarding how embedded deposit tools are related to the work of the library and the repository.

The intention is to use the reduction in deposit barriers offered by the tool and the activities of this project to enhance open access content, creating more full-text objects available under stable URIs. This will be used to demonstrate that repositories can play a part in the researcher's daily activities, and that a deposit mandate is viable for the partner institutions. Success is measurable by an increase in the number of open access items and unique users which is greater than the expected increase without use of the deposit tool and the advocacy throughout this project. Other outputs will take the form of documentation available freely on the web.

The tangible outputs of the project will include:

1. Open access training materials: generic training materials which can be used to raise awareness of the deposit tool, and what it means for the academic to self-archive.
2. Training strategies for embedded deposit tools: how training proceeded, and any particular challenges and solutions in conveying what it means to deposit in a repository from a different system.
3. User survey report: feedback from the user community on whether this reduced-barrier and embedded approach to deposit is appropriate, and how it could be improved.
4. Advocacy strategies for embedded deposit tools: advocacy materials and lessons learned from making academics aware of the embedded deposit tool; how the feedback loop can be made to best benefit the researchers.
5. A user community space: the consortium will create and host a user community space for repository managers and depositors, with the intention that this will grow to include other consortium-based deposit tool users after the end of the project.

- Posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Literature review: CTREP Cambridge TETRA Repositories Enhancement Project

This project was based at the University of Cambridge and the partner institution was the University of Highlands and Islands but UHI found themselves unable to commit to the final stages of the project.

The aims of the project were:
· To increase the number of submissions to the IR, to preserve and disseminate research
· To increase the satisfaction of users with the IR through improving the ease of use and increasing integration with other institutional systems
· To increase the institutionalisation and embedding of the IR
· To develop a technical integration tool which connected the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) to the IR


Outcomes:
- An integration tool was successfully developed and deployed between the VRE and IR. This is a JAVA based open source adaptor which is designed to be reusable in other institutions. A widget, Camtools, was also designed to upload files from the VRE. Background work included the configuration of the widget which enabled metadata cross walking, routing of submissions to communities and collections and user customization of display and process
· Relationships were built between the technical cultural differences between the departments that managed the VRE which were innovation units with a focus on experimentation and rapid development and the Library departments that managed the repository, with a focus on preservation and sustainability. Layered on to this was the academic culture which varied across subject areas
· The number of IR communities has doubled and the number of collections has tripled. As of May 2009, there were 20 000 items in Cambridge’s IR

Lessons learnt which may help to shape RePosit advocacy work:
· Vital to get good working relationships and communications channels between any different teams that are involved in the process eg technical, library and research management. The different stakeholders need to understand the different cultures and focuses and address them
· The project was not allowed to become primarily a software project, the focus had to remain on the institutionalisation of the IR. The tools developed were viewed as a means to achieve this goal.
· The VRE and IR groups presented a “joint offering” to the institution, which hid the artificial barriers of software and management structures. This “joint” approach carried through into other areas such as metrics and other research support topics.
· Ensure awareness of different stakeholder groups specific interests/ concerns
· Need to address issues and concerns around what were considered the key issues: Open Access, dark archiving, research ethics and repository scope
· Advocacy emails about the IR were carefully targeted to groups of staff so people did not get annoyed with duplicate/ irrelevant emails

http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/358/1/ctrep_report.pdf

Nicola Cockarill, Senior Subject Librarian, University of Plymouth

Literature review - the Embed Project

The Embed project, investigated cultural barriers in two Universities which inhibited academic engagement with their repositories. The project then looked at possible solutions to these barriers, with the aim to increase submissions and enhance the service by ‘embedding’ into the research process.

The project started with a user requirement study, which identified key aims:

• Improve Awareness raising/advocacy strategies
• Understand the publication processes which affect willingness to submit
• Investigate system requirements for an effective submission process

Each University took a different approach: Cranfield University relaunched and rebranded their repository and aligned it closely with the research agenda (e.g. REF, impact of research). At Robert Gordon University (RGU) they used a targeted approach, with ‘champions’ in key positions throughout the University.

Outcomes: Increase in submission rates, Greater variety of material submitted, Evidence of raised awareness and consequent cultural change

At Cranfield their repository became part of the research management and dissemination process, rather than a library activity. At RGU they saw a greater understanding of repositories, particularly in terms of publicity opportunities. The profile of their repository was raised, by involving University Committee’s e.g. Research Committee

Lessons learned about awareness raising:

• Needs to be targeted at all Stakeholders e.g. administrator, researcher, manager
• One off advocacy is not enough, requires sustained and repeated
• Do not assume researchers understand repositories value or benefits, these need repeating!

Conclusion: Repository growth likely to be accelerated if have an integrated submission system and sustained advocacy campaign properly aligned with institutions research strategy

Other useful conclusions from the project report:

• The requirement for a single submission system where one deposit uploads to multiple external dissemination outlets including IRs, subject repositories, personal and departmental web pages.
• Repositories needs to be repositioned within a fully integrated Current Research Information System (CRIS)
• The system must be capable of collecting deposits at an early stage in the publication process, the optimum time appears to be when an item is accepted for publication.
• The need for more training and advocacy to ensure that researchers retain final pre-publication versions of their work where appropriate.
  

Embed Wiki Includes marketing and dissemination e.g. ‘raise your research profile’ ‘show your true colours’

Posted by Ellie James (Keele University)

Literature Review: Related Projects

CRIS to Repository deposit projects

This literature review looks at projects which deal explicitly with the deposit from a research or publications management system to a digital repository. There is a more complete list of remote deposit interface projects on the SONEX blog.

Full CRIS to Repository projects

BibApp

website

Project Description: BibApp is an open source project to build a public-facing publications management system which allows researchers and their publications to be associated and mines that data to expose collaborations and to find areas of expertise. It provides a SWORD based deposit interface for each publication.

Comments: The software supports the upload of multiple files through the bibapp interface, which can then be fired to a single repository as a SWORD package. There is no lifecycle management beyond the initial deposit, as it is subject to the fire-and-forget nature of SWORD.

EM-Loader

at EDINA
at PublicationsList

Project Description: To develop middleware between the PublicationsList software and The Depot to demonstrate the batch upload of bibliographic metadata from a publications list management service, and to also demonstrate the attachment of a full-text document to these batch uploads.

Comments: PublicationsList is an organisation independent bibliography manager which can import content from a variety of formats, and also allows you to search in WoS and PubMed and import your content. You can then upload a single file to the repository, or send metadata only records to the repository. It uses SWORD but also includes some other options such as supplying file version and specifying embargo dates. Publications can be updated in the repository, although it is unclear as to how the repository deals with these updates.

Frida

website

Project Description: Frida is the national research reporting system in Norway. It makes provision for full text files to be uploaded through its native interface which are stored in the system (not in a repository immediately). The research reporting system can be harvested by OAI-PMH which lists all of the metadata for the publications in their own custom format. This includes a reference to the full-text of the articles, which can then be obtained from another server.

Comments: The University of Tromsø developed an ingest mechanism for DSpace in PHP, which the University of Bergen have since converted into a Java based DSpace module which automatically harvests the content from Frida and inserts it into the ingest workflow.

Academics typically upload content at the end of each reporting year to the national system, and can optionally include a full-text file to associate with the publication. This is only pulled into institutional repositories periodically, so the academic does not interact at all with the repository or their library, and the content flows out of the university first before coming back in on harvest. Updates to full text are possible, and the DSpace integration can deal with updating existing content.

Symplectic Repository Tools

website

Project Description: To integrate Symplectic’s publications management system with a range of digital repositories, including DSpace, EPrints, Fedora and IntraLibrary The aim is to allow Symplectic to provide a repository deposit interface which is seamlessly included in their standard user interface.

Comments: The academic can upload individual files to the repository one at a time over a long period, and can also remove content at any point, thus engaging in full deposit lifecycle management of their content. The software integrates with the repository so that new content either triggers the ingest workflow or creates new versions of the item. The repository may also request metadata updates from the deposit interface host (Elements), so the connection is bi-directional.

Closely Related Projects

DepositMO

website

Project Description: a sister JISCdepo project, DepositMO is a project creating a repository deposit workflow connecting the user’s computer desktop, especially popular apps such as MS Office, with digital repositories based on EPrints and DSpace. DepositMO involves teams from the University of Southampton and Edinburgh University, and will liaise closely with Microsoft.

Comments: Using SWORD to deposit directly from the researcher’s authoring environment to a repository. Note that the package here is the word document itself, which is also a package format which can basically contain anything. The user should literally be able to “Save as ...” a repository item.

DURA Project

website

Project Description: a sister JISCdepo project to RePosit, the overall goal of DURA is to change the way researchers, departments, and universities deposit information into institutional repositories via an integration of a workflow reference management tool and institutional repositories. The information to be deposited includes both metadata and full-text content of research papers that have been authored by researchers affiliated with a specific institution.

Comments: Mendeley is a social tool for researchers to share content. The DURA project will allow users to pull in their publications from Symplectic Elements, and to either upload content to the repository from Mendeley using SWORD or Elements using Repository Tools.

Enrich

website

Project Description: The overall aim of Enrich is to improve the integration of Enlighten, the University of Glasgow’s institutional repository service with the institution’s Research System. The objectives include providing a comprehensive publications management system for the university, and making that content available in other university systems such as the library search tool. It also aims to provide staff profiles which include the publications lists from the repository and project information from the research system.

Comments: this is an example of the boundary between the repository and the CRIS being incredibly blurred. Enlighten will become the definitive list of all publications and full-text for the University of Glasgow. Based on EPrints this is also in line with the objective of making that software effectively a publications management system and repository all in one.

Other Notable Projects

CRIS/OAR

website

Project Description: to increase the practical interoperability between CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) and OAR (Open Access Repositories) systems by defining and proposing a metadata exchange format for publication information with an associated common vocabulary.

Open Access Repository Junction (OA-RJ)

website

Project Description: The purpose of this project is to scope, build and test a deposit broker tool to assist open access deposit into, and interoperability between, existing repository services. It is primarily interested in simplifying the repository deposit workflow for multiple-authored journal articles.


- posted by Richard Jones

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)

1st Project team meeting minutes

Herewith the full minutes from the first RePosit project team meeting, held on Tuesday 20th July at Queen Mary, University of London (attached below).

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1B9gn7HlqlrEPyBfq5Ah7N5Gt7MUJuTPYOLL4-s2tUUI

In brief:
The discussions started by looking at each of the five HEIs in terms of where each site is up to at the moment, what content is in the repository, what their workflows are. Each institution is currently at a very different stage, both in terms of technology use and attitudes to deposit. Then we discussed what each partner hoped to gain from the RePosit project. We looked at the JISC expectations and requirements (in particular, documentation and dates) and sorted out the project admin. The main part of the meeting was taken up by a review of the project proposal and looking at our next steps, starting with a literature review of other JISC projects for key lessons learned to help shape our own advocacy and training programme and materials, ready for discussion at our next project meeting in September in Exeter. Finally, in looking ahead to the project's full scope of activities, it was agreed to run the project for 12 months, to end in July 2011.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Potential Deposits

A great success this week is that we have developed a report that runs against the publications management system which can give the project partners an idea of the potential limit of allowed deposits through the deposit interface. It works by using stored information about the SHERPA RoMEO colours for the ISSNs of each publication in the system to build a profile of which publications have which colours associated with them. Then we can see of the total number of publications in the system which have GREEN and BLUE colours. We have tried this out on the Keele University instance, and found an incidence of around 25% legitimately archivable articles. Now we're in the process of gathering this information across all the systems, and we'll aim to publish our first baseline survey shortly.

posted by: Richard Jones