Transcript Leveraging the Institutional Research Repository: harnessing the drive for quality assessment Enabling Interaction and Quality: Beyond the Hanseatic League 8th International Conference on Current.

Leveraging the Institutional Research
Repository: harnessing the drive for
quality assessment
Enabling Interaction and Quality: Beyond the Hanseatic League
8th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems
12 May 2006
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk
http://irra.eprints.org
Jessie M.N. Hey, Leslie A. Carr, Pauline Simpson
University of Southampton Libraries and School of Electronics and Computer
Science
University of Southampton, UK
Bergen feels a little like home
except for the mountain
We compete on cruise ships,
however!
University of Southampton –
granted Royal Charter 1952
Research–led multidisciplinary university
20,000 students
5000 staff
3000 researchers
University of Southampton Institutional
Research Repository: e-Prints Soton for
short!
Outline
• A little history – a research repository
grounded in local needs
• The TARDis route map
• Scaling up
• Preparing for research assessment
• Towards a sustainable repository for
local needs and feeding into the national
research information environment
From ‘esoteric knowledge’ to a real
institutional research repository
From embarkation to escalation…..
Soon 12th anniversary of Stevan Harnad’s ‘Subversive Proposal’
leading to the open access vision for scholarly material
• See also Harnad, S. and Hey, J. M. N. (1995) Esoteric Knowledge:
the Scholar and Scholarly Publishing on the Net. In Proceedings of
Networking and the Future of Libraries 2: Managing the Intellectual
Record, Proceedings of an International Conference, Bath, 19-21
April 1995, 110-16. Dempsey, L., Law, D. and Mowlat, I., Eds.
• The vocabulary has moved on and the climate is being
transformed
the work of researchers in our own institution is still often
unavailable to us ……and we also get emails from across
the world when we haven’t yet got the full text…. but that’s
incentive to produce it
Southampton influences
• Original EPrints software created at Southampton to enable the
vision - now used by around 200 institutions worldwide – also
spawned other software choices
• EPrints: "World's best practice for an institutional repository"
Prof. Arthur Sale, Univ. of Tasmania
• Some Southampton (Soton) departments have culture of deposit
(but not all were OAI compliant and searchable together)
• Electronics and Computer Science use the software for the
school publications database – now a repository with daily
deposits (will be incorporated into e-Prints Soton)
• For now can use ePrints UK or OAIster to search both
• National Oceanography Centre was keen to adopt
The proactive school to emulate….
see the regularity and variety of
output
Scanning the very latest
deposits we find examples of:
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Journal article
PhD
Book chapter
Newspaper article
Poster
Speech at conference
Technical report
• Total records in this database
approx.10,000
An Institutional Research
Repository for Southampton
• Institutional Repository for Research set up (e-Prints Soton)
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk with TARDis project to investigate issues for
the then new concept (within JISC funded FAIR programme)
• Southampton University Research e-Prints - working closely with
individual ‘schools’ – found that depends so much on publication culture
and working practices
• TARDis project: Feeding back into EPrints software
good citation and information management practice
experimenting with best balance of assisted and self deposit
• Distinction: has capacity for adding full text (e-Prints) if available
– Electronic copies of any research output e.g. journal articles, book
chapters, conference papers even multimedia
• TARDis: Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and Disclosure
• FAIR: Focus on Access to Institutional Resources
University central recording of
research – reactive not proactive
Central recording mechanism via Corporate and Marketing Service – MS Word lists
“the Research Report provides a comprehensive list of publications by University
staff “
Progressed to pdfs - 1998 to 2002 on the web
Need an easier, more proactive way with full text potential
The UK and quality
assessment for new funding
• Neil Jacobs’ talk today on Why no CRIS?
Suggests funding structure is key but also
suggests possible benefits to present to
stakeholders in support of a CERIF based
CRIS in the UK
• Research Assessment Exercise 2008 – both
huge opportunity for engagement and
complexity challenge at the same time
Route map to Open Access from TARDis
project – were making steady progress
around the circle
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University of Southampton: high
level endorsement
• University request for all
potential RAE outputs to be
deposited
• Funding to boost IR support for
the RAE
• Aim for IR to be fully embedded
as tool for research support
• Endorsement from DVC for
Research and Heads of Schools
Prof Philip Nelson
DVC for Research
and Enterprise
Building on Southampton Press
Release 15 Dec 2004
‘We see our Institutional Repository as a key
tool for the stewardship of the University's
digital research assets,' said Professor Paul
Curran, Deputy Vice Chancellor of the
University. 'It will provide greater access to
our research, as well as offering a valuable
mechanism for reporting and recording it.’
Paul Curran is now Vice Chancellor at
Bournemouth University and is pushing
forward with their own repository
Research Repository integrated
into planning
• Strong links with the overall University RAE
management – the RAE CRIS
• From data sub-group to a full member of the
University RAE Planning Group
• Research repository an integral part of data collection
and evaluation
• Member of Planning Dept with key responsibility for
the RAE attends our bi-weekly repository meetings
Deep liaison
• Challenge of getting “deep” levels of liaison e.g.
technical staff, School RAE Manager, School editors,
Deputy Heads of School Research, Heads of Schools
• Even bigger challenge of engaging with all staff for
RAE output selection
• RAE deadlines are taken seriously but problem of
awareness of roles and timescales for stages e.g.
metadata evaluation
Challenges
• Clarifying areas of responsibility - the IR is not a reason for
others to give us poor quality bibliographic information
• There are always Schools who are less engaged and
resistance to the open access movement is still as factor
• Workflow – some Schools want most of their papers to
choose from creating a heavy demand for metadata
validation in a short timescale e.g. 3000 records
• Diversity of disciplines – performances, artefacts, software
and the full range of RAE types added to software
Metadata team for current high
input workflow
• 1.6 FTE core staffing (1 as team manager and
trainer)
• For RAE currently 4.6 FTE additional
temporary staffing and equivalent of 1.8 FTE
seconded from library activity (4 staff)
• Staffing has some fluidity – training
investment and QA risk
Team effort to increase records for
RAE practice run later in year
Workflow challenge
• Checking accuracy of metadata, verifying
publication, adding subject headings (Library of
Congress) and adding DOIs and other appropriate
full text links
• Tight timescale, a lot of records need to go through
quickly – RAE is going hand in hand with ongoing
work
Processing 200 a day – mix of
self archived and bulk import
Additional software functionality
for workflow management
• Enhanced sort facilities for the editorial
review/submission buffer
• Statistics for editor’s work to monitor workflow
and for Quality Assurance
• Added function so inadequate records can be
sent back to nominated School contact from the
editorial review – once an output is selected for
the RAE from the live records automatic flag for
missing RAE metadata
Progress on original IR route map from
TARDis project – RAE now a full part of
this integration
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Towards broader RAE support
in the UK
• e-Prints Soton both contributes and
learns from the UK wide IRRA
(Institutional Repositories and Research
Assessment) project (funded by JISC)
• Based on experience of earlier dry runs
in Electronics and Computer Science
School (see Hitchcock, CRIS 2004)
RAE modules for EPrints and
DSpace repository software
• The EPrints RAE software is available
as an independent download for EPrints
repositories.
• The DSpace RAE software is available
for trial as a hosted service.
• Bronze release Jan 2006
IRs as the core of
assessment: IRRA workflow
Which are my papers? Can I
correct them?
• Had linked deposit to Information
Systems id/password for scalable
deposit and now author editing is
facilitated
• Now, for RAE, must require authors
to link to staff ids to ensure unique
person claims papers
Selection of papers for RAE
and reports for group
Problems to correct
Measures of esteem to enter
The service with RAE support:
• Many thanks to the dedicated University
of Southampton Institutional Research
Repository, library based, team
• especially Wendy White - IR manager and
RAE liaison
• Simon de Montfalcon – workflow/metadata
team leader
• Adam White and Seb François – technical
support
• and EPrints Services
For further information
•http://eprints.soton.ac.uk (exemplar IRR)
•http://irra.eprints.org/ (for RAE software
modules)
•http://eprints.org (EPrints software)
•http://tardis.eprints.org/papers (for earlier
papers)
Thank you Jessie Hey, Leslie Carr, Pauline Simpson
And watch this space for our progress
towards true Open Access and keen,
experienced academic depositors