Repositories management, policies, and best practices RSP webinar 29 th June 2012 Jackie Wickham Centre for Research Communications University of Nottingham.

Repositoriesmanagement, policies, and best practices

RSP webinar 29th June 2012

Jackie WickhamCentre for Research CommunicationsUniversity of Nottingham

Green Route

Picture by Darkos http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkos/

Outline

Background – RSP and repository growth

Value of institutional repositories

Success - support, advocacy and integration

Policies and content types

Staffing and skills

RSP Aims

• More…

repositories content

use of content

re-use of content

Support repositories to be fit for purpose,

Standardised and Sustainable

Project history

- Initially a 2.5 year JISC funded project September 2006 – March 2009 Lead Institution – University of Nottingham Partner Institutions – University of

Southampton, Aberystwyth University, Digital Curation Centre (University of Edinburgh), UKOLN (University of Bath).

- Second phase April 2009 – July 2012• University of Nottingham

The RSP Offers…

Proportion of repositories by country

Finch Report

“Barriers to access – particularly when the research is publicly funded - are increasingly unacceptable in an online world.”

Image by Tobyotter

Recommendations

• Support for publication in open access or hybrid journals

• Research Councils and other public sector bodies funding research in the UK should arrangements to meet the costs of publishing in open access and hybrid journals

Is there a place for institutional repositories

in a gold open access world?

OA Repositories – the benefits for institutions

© The University of Nottingham 2010

• Showcase for institutions research output• Marketing mechanism – internally and

externally• REF and research management – repositories

support process• Complies with research body requirements for

open access publishing• Allows systematic management and

preservation of assets • Encourages collaboration and inter-disciplinary

work• Public engagement – community, business

Benefits for institutions

Benefits for academics

© The University of Nottingham 2010

• Faster dissemination• Wider readership• Increased citation• Compliance with funders mandates• Secure environment to store own research

output• Personalise services – statistics on

downloads, personal profiles/bibliographies

Benefits for academics

“I’ve also had a number of international scholars and research students read my articles and listen to the music I have available in the repository. As a result, I am now pursuing collaborative research projects with music studios and researchers in Mexico and Norway”Monty Adkins, University of Huddersfield

How to make your repository successful

3 P’s – from the University of Glasgow

People PoliciesProcesses

Senior management support

We felt it [the repository] was a big opportunity for the university to promote its research outputs in many ways it had not done before… we saw the Open Access agenda as a way of supporting that rekindling of promoting the university.” Professor Steve Beaumont, University of Glasgow

Senior management support

• Demonstrate the case• Talk to influential people, make relationships• Use other institutions as a benchmark – the

competitive element• Make the most of drivers – e.g. support for

research assessment• Set up a steering group with key people from

research, library etc• Formal policies approved by key management

committees e.g. Research Committee

Advocacy

• Key element of embedding repositories in research culture

• Increases number of deposits• Ensures continuation of resources for the

repository• Interactive – listening is as important as

talking• Address local/departmental concerns –

ensure this voice in repository developments

Tips for Successful Advocacy

• Every institution will be different– No one approach that succeeds for all

• Message and medium must be tailored– Selling minutiae to ProVC is doomed to fail– Be where the academics are

• Advocacy isn’t just top academics– Administrators, support staff, opinion leaders

• Prepare a two minute pitch • We often to provide too much information – make it

attractive, credible, understandable. • The REF & other quality assurance audits

– A route to your academics’ hearts– New metric based approach suits repository functionalityhttp://www.rsp.ac.uk/grow/advocacy/

Silos are the past…

Sources: Flickr, silo by dsearl

LDAP

Integrated and embedded Repositories are the future

SwordAPP

University of Glasgow, William Nixon

Integration

• Working towards a culture among researchers which leads them to view the repository as a natural tool for disseminating their research and for raising their profile, which will in turn increase the volume of actual outputs placed in the repository

• Ensuring that the repository is seen by both researchers and senior managers as part of the institutional research infrastructure rather than a separate information or data silo and is properly resourced to fulfil that role

•  

Integration

• Making certain that the process of deposit into the repository forms part of the workflow for research in as seamless a way as possible and avoiding duplication of effort

• Linking the repository to external systems (such as those of funders) and information sources (e.g. Web of Science), where appropriate

• Facilitating the search and discovery process to ensure that the repository’s contents are easily found and appropriately linked to other information such as staff profiles

Repository data feeds staff profiles

www.rsp.ac.uk/embeddingguide

Policies

Image by Terry Bain

To mandate or not to mandate?

Hands up if you have a mandate?

Hands up if you have a publications policy?

Does it really matter what you call it?

Stevan Harnad

http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/905-Finch-Fiasco-in-Figures.html

Other key policies

• Metadata Policy- for information describing items in the repository. Access to metadata; Re-use of metadata

• Data Policy - for full-text and other full data items. Access to full items; Re-use of full items

• Content Policy - for types of document and dataset held. Repository type; Type of material held; Principal languages

Other key polices

• Submission Policy - concerning depositors, quality and copyright. Eligible depositors; Deposition rules; Moderation; Content quality control; Publishers' and funders' embargos; Copyright policy

• Preservation Policy Retention period; Functional preservation; File preservation; Withdrawal policy; Withdrawn items; Version control; Closure policy

• http://www.opendoar.org/tools/en/policies.php

Compliance with copyright

Take down policy

http://www.rsp.ac.uk/start/policies-and-legal-issues/take-down-policies/

Make your repository discoverable

• Be seen!– Implement OAI-PMH– Registering repositories– Be visible to search engines

Be Seen!: implement OAI-PMH

• OAI-PMH = Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata

http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html

“provides an application-independent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting “

Also see: DRIVER Guidelines

http://www.driver-support.eu/managers.html

Be Seen!: registering repositories• OpenDOAR- http://www.opendoar.org

• ROAR - http://roar.eprints.org/

• Openarchives.org - http://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites

• Your software community – e.g DSpace instances

http://www.dspace.org/whos-using-dspace/Repository-List.html

• OAIster - http://www.oclc.org/oaister/

• BASE - http://www.base-search.net/

*http://www.rsp.ac.uk/usage/

Be Seen!: be visible to search engines• Do Not!

– Require all visitors to have a username and password – Set a 'robots.txt' file and/or use 'robots' meta tags in HTML

headers that prevent search engine crawling – Accept poor quality or restrictive PDF files   – Hide your OAI Base URL

• Ensure you have a 'Browse' interface with hyperlinks between pages  

• Avoid awkward URLs - Many harvesters and firewalls will spit out or block: – Numeric URLs - e.g. http://130.226.203.32/ – URLs that use 'https:' instead of 'http:' – URLs that include unusual port numbers e.g. :47231 – Overlong URLs with arguments (any URL containing ‘?’)*http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/documents/ways-to-screw-up.html

Types of materials stored in repositories

• Journal articles• Bibliographic references (metadata only)• Books, sections and chapters• Conference and workshop papers• Theses and Dissertations• Unpublished reports & working papers• Datasets• Educational resources and learning objects• Multimedia and audio-visual materials• Software• Patents

Focus on the creative arts

• VisibilityShowcasing work

•PreservationGallery content disappearsPersonal websites go down

http://www.rsp.ac.uk/help/creativearts/ From Constance Howard CollectionFor reuse rights see VADS

Using Statistics

• Show the rate of deposit

• Number of downloads

• Where from • Top 10 downloads

Usage statistics – University of Huddersfield

Survey of UK Repository staff

• 29th July to 5th September 2010• SurveyMonkey• Distributed via UKCoRR list • 215 members (August 2010) and there

were 84 respondents. • Interviews with a couple of respondents• http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1511/

Backgrounds of UK staff

95% first degree

74% post grad qualification

Roles

Skills

Further information on staffing

• RSP Repository staff and skills sethttp://www.rsp.ac.uk/documents/

Repository_Staff_and_Skills_Set_2011.pdf

• UK Repositories including staffing levels: RSP wiki

http://www.rsp.ac.uk/pmwiki/index.php?n=Institutions.HomePage

• JISC Recruitment toolkithttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/

informationenvironment/recruitment.aspx

Thanks for listening Questions?

Jackie Wickham

[email protected]+44(0)115 8466389

Resources

• Repositories Support Project www.rsp.ac.uk

• Driver guidelines http://www.driver-support.eu/managers.html

• Confederation of Open Access Repositories http://www.coar-repositories.org/

• OASIS http://tinyurl.com/68jrpk3• RCAAP How to create a repository

http://tinyurl.com/bpmmgzc