Feature g


discovery. What’s more, customised search and analysis tools can be created using CORE index and its API. In line with other key player’s sentiments on impact, Jisc has also launched national aggregation services, IRUS-UK, IRUS-ANZ and most recently IRUS-US, which provide download statistics for content within a repository within the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US. ‘We’re excited to grow our portfolio of IRUS services because institutional repositories can now look at their usage at the national level as well as benchmark at the international level,’ says Bal.


Indeed, Jisc has been quick to put


together a table showing the use of coronavirus-related content in IRUS, featuring items from all three services. ‘We are already seeing some useful insights from comparing usage in this way,’ highlights Bal. ‘In working towards a global picture, we’ll have a better understanding of content usage, and the important role of institutional repositories in providing open access to content, across the current fragmented landscape.’ (See ‘Repositories far and wide’, below)


Coronavirus catch-all But while the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted how repositories provide an indispensable platform to collate and disseminate research swiftly, it has also flagged up an underlying need for screening.


Indeed, within a few weeks of the


coronavirus outbreak, bioRxiv and medRxiv had enhanced screening procedures on manuscripts to weed out dubious research results. As Figshare’s Hahnel highlights: ‘We’ve


seen this with our ChemRxiv clients and have said they need to add a banner to such content, pointing out that it is not peer-


Repositories far and wide


As worldwide demand for repositories rises, France-based MyScienceWork has just signed a deal with distributor, Vozbits, Mexico, to provide its open-source Polaris OS repository technology across Mexico, Chile and Colombia. Polaris OS serves as an institutional and research data repository, as well as a multimedia archive and library management system. According to MyScienceWorks, the system allows users to create high-quality, robust and scalable repositories that support complex functions with little to no programming skills. Jisc recently listed MyScienceWork as an official supplier of Research Outputs


Repository Systems with Polaris OS. And the company is also a Phase 1 winner of OpenAIRE’s Open Innovation challenge to develop products linked to scholarly works, repositories and data management. ‘Latin America is a momentous focus for MyScienceWork,’ says Yann Mahé, managing director of MyScienceWork. ‘Our presence in Mexico shows our deep commitment to strengthen global innovation cooperation... [and provide] solutions to address open science matters and more specifically open access.’


Mark Hahnel


“Without a doubt, the community can expect to see more advances in discovery and impact”


reviewed. I believe that data as well as pre- prints fall into this category of research that needs to be published quickly but needs some level of checking.’


Indeed, Hahnel has spent the past


year working with the US-based National Institutes of Health on a generalist data repository to store and re-use NIH-funded research data. Crucially, the repository has been curated by trained data librarians that check detail on, say, licensing and metadata, to ensure data aligns with the FAIR principles. And Hahnel thinks this low- level screening has made a huge difference. ‘Our State of Open Data reports indicates that many people like assistance while


Nina Watts


publishing data... and this NIH repository is providing a safe way to do this,’ he says. ‘Also, initial data [from the NIH] on content


use and downloads shows that the impact of checked files is significantly higher [than files that haven’t been checked].’ So it would seem that even simple


screening benefits repository content and users. Still, as Hahnel points out, going forward, who checks and who pays? ‘We’re in a transition period here, and the business model for this is still up in the air,’ he says. ‘But I think its going to have to involve human curation.’ So what now for repositories? Without a doubt, the community can expect to see more advances in discovery and impact as well as interoperability, data ingestion and re-use. As Bankier says: ‘We have the momentum and the change that is coming is good.’ At the same time, Jisc’s Bal firmly


believes that the increasing number of repositories is raising the awareness of open access and open research, and this will continue. ‘Open access is widely seen as the norm, and this cultural shift is very important,’ she says. ‘To that end, we welcome the focus on


open research in the UK Government’s Research and Development Roadmap, and remain committed to providing the research community with the systems, repositories and intelligence to truly reap the benefits of open research.’ And for repository user, Watts from


WestminsterResearch, the rise in tools and open access has already delivered much- needed results. ‘At first [depositing content in] an institutional repository was a nice thing to do, but with open access this has become a compliance issue’ she says. ‘This has definitely led to better repositories.’ Ri


8 Research Information August/September 2020 @researchinfo | www.researchinformation.info


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