Institutional repositories


in Lifelong Learning’ from its existing print subscription model to an OA e-journal. As part of the project, Stone and colleagues developed a front-end and landing pages specifically for the journal, with content archived in the repository. According to Stone, his team selected the university’s existing institutional repository over other systems, such as the journal and publishing management system, Open Journal Systems, as it was already very well indexed in Google. What’s more, the repository was to be included in the DOAJ, making its content retrievable via library discovery systems such as Summon. Four years on, the project has been a resounding success with the repository now home to eight journals, each with an editorial board. What’s more, Stone is being approached more and more by academics that want their research data included in the system. ‘A lot of the content is from the social sciences and humanities and what we are seeing tends to be journals at the research practitioner crossover,’ he says. ‘But we are just about to launch our first STEM title, a pharmacy journal, and academics are very interested.’


According to Stone, in the UK alone, at least two other universities have since adopted Huddersfield’s approach of using a repository platform developed with E-Prints. And, he adds: ‘Cardiff University has just launched a press, UCL has a monograph press, so activity is growing in the UK, and has already certainly exploded in the US.’ Right now, Stone says content tends to come


from early-career researchers; one of the eight journals, Fields, covers undergraduate research. And research papers aside, content comes in many forms.


‘In areas such as music, art and design, we’re seeing more people understanding how to put non-textual outputs into the repository,’ says Stone. ‘But we’re also seeing more researchers understanding how to add, say, an exhibition with a podcast.’ Clearly, general academic interest in the institutional repository is rising across the globe,


‘We are just about to


launch our first STEM title, a


pharmacy journal’ Graham Stone, University of Huddersfield, UK


as library publisher interest follows suit. But to any academic, the impact factor of publishing is immensely important, and citation metrics are king. And of course, right now, even the institutional repository that attaches a DOI to each piece of content and also makes content discoverable via Google or other search engines, can’t offer this.


But developments continue. Most repositories, including the EPrints platform, include a statistics package so academics can track how


FEATURE


many times an article is accessed. As Stone adds: ‘Being in DOAJ helps, being found on Google helps and of course the next thing to look at is citations.’


Indeed, as Jones states: ‘Data citations are going to happen as everything that goes into most repositories gets a DOI from DataCite. I know that Thomson Reuters is tracking when [pieces of content] get cited so some kind of infometrics is in the pipeline from them.’ However, neither Jones or Stone are under no illusion that the credit from any institutional repository is going to match that from a primary publication, describing hypothesis-driven research. But does it matter? ‘We already have conference proceedings and review articles that don’t carry as much weight as primary pieces of research that are hypothesis driven,’ asserts Jones. ‘I don’t buy this argument that there is some level of yet-to-be-determined credit that could be some kind of game-stopper.’ And while a convergence between the repository and library publisher is underway, does this really threaten existing publishing models? Stone thinks not.


Highlighting how its still early days for institutional repositories, he says: ‘In real terms we know that this is still a few universities doing this and we’re not necessarily treading on anybody’s toes. But by publishing in an institutional repository, we can help young academics get used to the whole publishing process,’ he adds. ‘I think this and [traditional publishing] can probably live together.’


SPONSORED CONTENT PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT Institutional repositories


Launch of Open Repository Lite: a high-value, low-cost repository


Open Repository is a hosted repository service from BioMed Central, the world’s leading open access specialist, that builds, hosts, customizes and maintains enhanced DSpace repositories on behalf of organizations. Open Repository is a DuraSpace Registered Service Provider and a partner of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories. Open Repository Lite was recently launched to offer institutes from low and middle income countries and smaller


www.researchinformation.info


organizations operating within budget and resource limitations, a high-value, low-cost repository. This new service allows organizations to easily upload, manage, preserve and disseminate their content to a global audience and comply with open access mandates and policies. Other benefits include: rapid-setup; deployment, configuration and branding; regular updates and test platform; technical support and documentation; and the BMC Foundation Membership


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Open Repository works with a number of high profile organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières, OXFAM, University of Arizona, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the South African Medical Research Council. Open Repository Lite will be officially launched at the upcoming IFLA WLIC 2015 congress in Cape Town, South Africa, on 20 August 2015 during Session 208 (presentation: Dissemination of


output an issue? The solution is . . .). This is a special event to introduce a new open access health sciences research repository to Africa (A BioMed Central and PHi initiative supported by HBL Section and FAIFE). Open Repository will be present at the conference at booth A101.


For more information, visit www.openrepository.com or email us at info@openrepository.com


AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015 Research Information 33


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