Institutional Repositories: What the Open Access agenda means for a modern institution

www.le.ac.uk

Institutional RepositoriesWhat the Open Access agenda means for a modern institution

Gareth J Johnson & Valérie SpeziLeicester Research ArchiveDavid Wilson LibraryUniversity of Leicester25 Mar 2010

lra.le.ac.uk

Overview

• Introduction

• Open access & repositories overview

• The world of the LRA

• Challenges and wider agenda

• Group exercise

• Questions & Discussion

• Open access to scholarly publications– Born in 1990s in Physics & Economics communities– Exploits allowable exceptions in © law– Increasingly mainstream since early 2000s

• OA advantages– Greater access to literature to all research

community– Greater speed of dissemination– Availability provides a citation bump– Public access to publically funded research– Advancement of human knowledge– Curation & safe keeping of institutional treasures

Open Access

• All Russell Group Universities have repositories– 121 institutional repositories like LRA in UK– 12 institutional mandates now in place

• Sources OpenDOAR & ROARMAP

• Open access archiving (OAA, Green route)– Works alongside traditional publishing– Services institutional & subject repositories

• Open access publishing (OAP, Gold route)– An alternative approach to traditional practice– Pay-up front model of funding– Fully OA journals or paid publisher options– May or may not allow for OAA on LRA

Open Access Today

Open Access Archiving Overview (Green Route)

The LRA

PreReview

PostReview

Publisher’sVersion

Copyright & LRA• General academic awareness of copyright

transfer (CTA) and retained rights is weak

• Pervasive scholarly gift culture

• Repository team need a strong grounding in rights and reuse– Use of SHERPA/RoMEO helps– Need to be flexible and adaptable to changes

• Repository copyright is a grey area, much untested in law

• Complexities of third party copyright in theses

Leicester University• Top 20 in all National tables

– 91% student satisfaction rate– 6th Highest citations rates relative to size

• 23,000 students– 41% Distance Learners

• Around 1000 academic staff– 93% submitted for RAE ’08– 87% determined to be producing

internationally significant research

• 4 Colleges– Moved from faculty structure this academic

year

LRA Secret Origins

• Founded as Library project 2006– Secondment of 0.5fte manager & 0.5fte

administrator

• Academic support but not direct involvement

• Full-text purist at start– RAE 2007/8 ingest of 2500+ metadata only

records

• 2008 moves towards service– Implications for staffing and workflows

TheLRA

TEAM

The LRA Method

• Fully mediated– Self-archiving option

• Self archiving trial 2 years ago

• Research and nothing else– Top level decision and ongoing ethos– Educational and non-scholarly objects sent elsewhere…

• Contents– The usual melange of documents, images, software and

data– Focus on author’s final versions unless © says otherwise

• Author Licence – Signed first time

Licence to Kill

What’s It Like to Work On?

www.le.ac.uk

Institutional Repositories

Part 3

• Comprises– Around 4,700 items (~40% full text)– RSS feeds for collections and departments– Commerce using it to ID & assess collaborators– Core team to enable archiving and provide advice

• Webometrics– A measure of their visibility and scholarly regard– 165th ranked HEI Repository globally– Highly ranked HEI Repository in the UK

• #13 Cambridge• #14 Brunel• #15 SAS• #16 Leicester/LRA• #17 Huddersfield• #18 SOAS

LRA Today

What’s in the LRA: Materials

Article 70%

Book/chapter13%

Thesis6%

Con-fer-

ence Paper

1%

Other11%

Items in the LRA

Full text ~25-35%

What’s Used in the LRA: Items

Article49%

Article (NFT)11%

Book (NFT)9%

Book Chap-ter1%

Conference Paper11%

Conference Paper (NFT)2%

Disserta-tion1%

Report4%

Software2%

Thesis10%

Item Type in LRA Top 100 Access 2009

What’s in the LRA: College

Arts, Human-ities and Law

16%

Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychol-

ogy36%

Other1%

Science and Engineering26%

Social Science 22%

Proportion of items in the LRA

What’s Used in the LRA: CollegeArts,

Humani-ties and

Law26%

Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychol-

ogy23%

Other3%

Science and Engineering32%

Social Science

16%

Proportion of items in LRA top 100 (2009)By College

Who’s Using the LRA?

VisitsDec 09 +25% Jan 10 +20%Feb 10 +3.2%

Outreach & Engagement

• Information librarians– Alerts and raising awareness

• Personal visits– Dept Meetings & Champions– Research Office collaborations

• Social networking– Twitter and RSS feeds– Twitter discussions with local community– Frequent blogged activities

Setting Policy• Original ethos & remit set by Research

Committee– Major policy decisions still at this level

• OpenDOAR policy generator– Used to create standard repository policies– Metadata, data, content, submission,

preservation and takedown

• Operational policy devolved to LRAPG– Tacit input from Research Committee– Responsive to changes in legal environment

and institutional standpoints

Preservation

• Underlying commitment from institution to maintain repository integrity

• Durable handles (persistent URLS) for all items

• Tomb stoning of items taken down

• Avoidance of bitrot formats– E.g. Old MS Office formats

• PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1) is preferred text standard– Range of standards for other materials– Some formats can be more problematic

Dark Forces Rising

CRIS & the LRA

• REF Preparation WG– Moves to integrate LRA & RED– Technical and political challenges

• Post-CRIS implementation– Role and integration of LRA– Merge, subsume, satellite or replace

• Pan-institution information systems collaboration– Media contacts, consultancy and personal web

spaces

Ethos

• Retrospective digitisation requests – Requirement of contacting author & signing of author

license– Funded for approx 100 items a year

• Tracing authors major time and throughput constraint– Access to alumni database helping– More staff time available to chase– Most requests in 2009 unfulfilled

• Issues outstanding with Ethos– Variable quality scans produced– Slow response to enquiries– First requestor pays funding stream– Academic confusion between LRA and Ethos

Getting Your Hands Dirty

• Examine some real challenges faced by repository managers– Based on today & own knowledge

• Three vital questions for each scenario– What would be the most effective response?– What problems or issues do you foresee?– What steps could be taken to minimise them?

• Work in groups and then report back

Feedback

• Repositories are as much about people as they are objects

• There are many, many grey areas and a lot of institutional policy is responsive

• Have to be cautious of setting precedents

• Flexibility and responsiveness in a dynamic environment is important

Closing Thoughts

• Gareth J Johnson– Document Supply & Repository Manager– gjj6@le.ac.uk– extn 2039

• Valérie, Margaret & Claire, – LRA Administrator team– lra@le.ac.uk/ethesis@le.ac.uk – extn 2039

Contacts

References• About the LRA: www.le.ac.uk/li/lra

• Institutional mandate: www2.le.ac.uk/offices/researchsupport/ref/pubpolicy

• The LRA: lra.le.ac.uk

• LRA policies: www.le.ac.uk/li/research/archivepolicies.html

• OpenDOAR: www.opendoar.org

• Research Support Project: www.rsp.ac.uk

• SHERPA/RoMEO: www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

• Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/GazJJohnson