Friday 3 September 2010

RePosit project - publications management system deposit investigated

The JISC funded RePosit project (RePosit: positing a new kind of repository deposit)http://jiscreposit.blogspot.com/ is investigating the effectiveness of a deposit tool in central research management system - Symplectic Elements - with a local institutional repository (WRRO). Many researchers at the University of Leeds interact with Symplectic on a regular basis and Symplectic acts as the university's central publication database. Shortly, depositors from Leeds will be able to upload full texts of their works to Symplectic; the metadata and any attached files will be immediately posted to WRRO for review. RePosit aims to create useful training materials / events to let depositors know about the new deposit route and obtain their feedback about it. We hope to see a rise in content over the course of the project and will be monitoring this closely.

Although University of Leeds is the project lead, the findings will be relevant for University of Sheffield (as a Symplectic site) and for the University of York. University of York is rolling out the PURE Campus Research Information System later this year. The outcomes from RePosit will be immediately relevant for York; it is envisaged PURE will become the main locus of deposit for WRRO content deposited by York researchers. A connector between the PURE system and WRRO is currently under development.
If you have any questions about the RePosit project, please email eprints@whiterose.ac.uk

Tuesday 29 June 2010

Royal Society policy supports open access self-archiving

The Royal Society no longer requires authors to wait 12 months before making their papers freely available in White Rose Research Online; Royal Society authors can now make their work available immediately. The final peer reviewed manuscript, as accepted for publication, can be deposited. Here are the Royal Society's Open Access options.

Uploading your accepted manuscript to White Rose Research Online is supported by many publishers - the RoMEO service lists hundreds of publishers which allow the final peer reviewed manuscript of your work to be made openly available. Some have an embargo period, some, like the Royal Society, Elsevier and Springer, do not have an embargo period. Most publishers don't allow open posting of the final, as published, PDF of a work with the publisher formatting etc - though some do.


Friday 26 March 2010

Latest statistics for WRRO

Usage of WRRO continues to rise. Data from Google Analytics shows 159,590 visits from 141,734 people from 203 countries/territories. Our most popular access route continues to be Google, generating 74% of our traffic. About 10% of users find us through a "referring site" - in other words, another web site linking to a page in WRRO. Over time, the % of our users who find us via linking sites is increasing. The most popular linking site is the University of Leeds Philosophy Department - e.g. Ross Cameron's web page. We also get accesses via wikipedia where White Rose papers have been linked from wikipedia articles. For example, this article on the Oldhams Limited cotton manufacturing companies links to Proctor & Toms' paper Procter, Stephen and Toms, Steven (2000) Growth, Profits and Technological Choice: The Case of the Lancashire Cotton Textile Industry, 1880-1914. Journal of Industrial History, 3 (1). pp. 54-72.

The top ten most popular terms typed into search engines which brought users to WRRO are:
"climate change"
"clinical decision making"
"decision making in nursing"
"clinical decision making in nursing"
"pornographic art"
"action research model"
"primeval games"
"permanent magnet generator"
"white rose research online"
"white rose repository"

Wednesday 6 January 2010

Universities UK Recommend all REF outputs should be open access

HEFCE's consultation on proposals for the Research Excellence Framework ended in December 09. The Universities UK consultation response suggests that, though not addressed in the REF proposals, it would be beneficial if all REF outputs were made openly available. The full text of the UUK response is available from the UUK website. On open access, the document states "UUK supports the move toward ‘open access’ of research outputs and, although not mentioned in the consultation, would encourage the REF guidance to require that all submitted outputs are available through some form of open access mechanism. This would build on good research and information management practice. Work currently being undertaken by JISC and other stakeholders can support this process."

Of course, the White Rose Research Online system aims to hold research outputs beyond those to be submitted for the REF. Whatever HEFCE's response to the UUK suggestion, it's already possible for White Rose researchers to do what UUK recommends - at least, for a significant proportion of research outputs. And, as deposit into WRRO may well boost the impact of your research outputs, there's little to lose - but potentially much to gain - by depositing.