OPEN ACCESS WEEK: What did we learn from the University of Leeds Reposit questionnaire?

Earlier this year, we distributed a questionnaire as part of the JISC funded RePosit project. The project reviewed the relationship between central research information systems (concentrating on Symplectic Elements) and open access repositories.

We had a great response (362) to our online questionnaire from a good mixture of academics and administrators across all Faculties.

Lessons learned: the questionnaire timing was good. 4^th July - 5^th August; £100 Amazon voucher provided a useful incentive (91% of respondents gave us their email so they could be entered into the draw).

Our lucky winner, drawn at random, was Dr David Owens from the Institute of Health Sciences. David is pictured above receiving congratulations from the University Librarian, Dr Stella Butler.

Some key findings for Leeds (Part 1)

1. Awareness

Awareness of Symplectic is good; awareness of the repository not as good – though there is a wide variation across different roles. Overall awareness of the White Rose Research Online Repository has risen across all staff roles compared with the results of a 2008 questionnaire (distributed as part of the JISC funded IncReASe project).

Lessons learned

• Awareness levels for White Rose Research Online are best (71%) amongst more senior University staff (Professors, Senior Lecturers). We need to increase awareness – particularly amongst Lecturers and Research Fellows.

2. The ‘new’ deposit route (via Symplectic)

Researchers at the University of Leeds deposit their papers into White Rose Research Online using a “Full Text Tab” in Symplectic Elements (i.e. the University’s Publication Database). We hope the deposit process is straightforward – but is it?

Those who had used the “Full Text” tab to deposit were reasonably positive about the experience: 71% thought deposit was quick; 61% though it was easy. On the other hand, 33% thought upload was confusing. Of course, these rating are from a relatively small number of respondents who had used the deposit tab to deposit their research.

We asked “Would you recommend that a colleague uses the Symplectic interface to upload to the institutional repository (White Rose Research Online)?” Only 7% said ‘no’ but 58% said ‘don’t know’.

Lessons Learned

• We need to improve awareness of the Symplectic based deposit route.
• This deposit route should be closely monitored to make sure that the process is as simple and transparent as possible.
• More widespread uptake of the new deposit route is needed to gather representative feedback on the depositor experience.

3. Who Deposits and Why

There weren’t many surprises here about motivators/inhibitors – our findings are similar to other research. The biggest deposit motivators were the desire to share research and to raise individual profile.

Why don’t people deposit? We know awareness is an issue but taking this out of the equation, the main inhibitors were: (i) worries about copyright (ii) not enough time (iii) not knowing how to upload. Some depositors pointed out OA was already taken care of for their work either through a subject repository (arXiv) or because they publish in OA journals.

Deposit (using the Symplectic based deposit tab) is usually undertaken by the author but a significant minority of authors have their work deposited by administrative staff. Depositors would like to re-use their deposited content in various ways, the most popular being:

• URL for dissemination to publicise the work
• Evidence of impact
• Statistical reports showing usage

Lessons learned

• More copyright reassurance is needed.
• A simple, online deposit guide may help.
• We need to close the feedback loop with depositors – regular (but not overfacing) reports on their deposit profile, uptake by their School and Faculty, and, importantly, download statistics

4. What support do depositors want?

Online guides and copyright support were the most popular from the options we offered in the questionnaire. However, many respondents gave us free text answers and their suggestions were: admin support, a better understanding of the benefits of deposit, bulk upload options, automatic harvesting (from personal web sites), a link with the University web site.

Depositors want information about the repository by email, and want online support (an e-tutorial).

UK Government creates working group to review how publicly funded research can be more widely disseminated

A working party set up to review academic publishing and research dissemination, including open access, will meet for the first time in October 2011 and report back in Spring 2012. The working party is chaired by Professor Janet Finch, University of Manchester and includes researchers, funders, libraries and publishers. Speaking at the British Science Festival in Bradford, David Willetts, Science Minister, emphasised the working group will play an important role in reviewing research dissemination, saying "Transparency is at the heart of the government’s agenda and it should apply to published research. We do fantastic research in the UK, of which we can be rightly proud, but I want to ensure that people are given the opportunity to know more about the projects that government funds. Research stimulates and fuels innovation and economic growth. So, to maximise UK innovation we need to maximise access to and the use of research findings.”

Department for Business and Skills news release

If you are a White Rose researcher, maximise access to your research by making it available through White Rose Research Online.

Consultation on scientific information in the digital age: last chance to register your views

(Now closed)

The European Commission is interested in your views on access to and preservation of digital scientific information. The consultation phase closes on the 9th September. The questionnaire is online at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/consultations/scientific_information/consultation_en.htm

RSP Event: RoMEO for Publishers

The Repositories Support Project (http://www.rsp.ac.uk/) recently held an event to explore how RoMEO http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ can help both repository staff and publishers. This event had representative speakers from RoMEO, repositories and publishers. Here’s a quick recap from the day;
The opening speaker was Bill Hubbard - Centre for Research Communication http://crc.nottingham.ac.uk/ . In his presentation he promoted the opportunities of OA; including the archival benefits of institutional repositories and how OA can actually help to prevent plagiarism. OA was also presented as an inevitable change in publishing and academic dissemination. With many researchers sharing files informally online and on their own websites the need for formal engagement with OA is needed to protect copyright and academic standards - Bill’s message to the publishers’ sitting in the room, “repositories are your friend”.
Azhar Hussain then gave a brief over view of the history of SHERPA RoMEO and its significance for publishers. Plans for the future include developing a more interactive community of users with real-time knowledge base for anwering copyright queries and developing more links with Web of Science. Mark Simon from Maney publishing http://www.maney.co.uk/ then outlined why they have chosen to be a “green publisher”. The morning finished with Marie Cairney who is the Team Leader for Enlighten, the University of Glasgow’s Institutional repository http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/. Due to a mandate since 2008 their repository seems to be a much bigger operation with more staff involved. This includes members of the library’s cataloguing team and also proxy depositors in departments whom they give training on RoMEO to. Glasgow has decided to have a dedicated person who will be responsible for sending information to RoMEO.
The afternoon session saw further presentations by staff from RoMEO, including a demo of the site’s new launch next month which includes a new Policy Generation Tool for publishers: http://www.romeo.ac.uk/publishers/policytool.php A presentation from Emerald Publishing http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ explained why they have not chosen the “gold” route at the moment – but have not ruled it out altogether.
The final part of the day consisted of breakout sessions where people were asked to consider how RoMEO can help publishers and how publishers can help RoMEO.
This was a very useful event where ideas were shared between repository staff and publishers, and where the publishers present seemed to want to engage and work with OA and repository staff.

Anthea Tucker & Gemma Storr

Reason to celebrate: First book added to White Rose Research Online

White Rose Research Online is delighted to have been able to add an entire book to the repository. Dr Mark Westgarth is an academic with the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies and had been encouraged by the School’s Research Committee to add his items to Symplectic (the university’s central publications database) so that his research profile was up to date. Dr Westgarth discovered that via Symplectic the item could be added to White Rose Research Online. When this item arrived in the repository we wrote to the Regional Furniture Society to see if they would be happy for us to make this available –which they were (they requested we also add a link to their website http://www.regionalfurnituresociety.com/ ).


Dr Westgarth (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/fine_art/07_Staff/Current/mw.html ) is very pleased that his book is now available worldwide and of course to the students taking his module, and White Rose Research Online is excited to now have an entire book from a fairly under represented subject area in its collection. If you are interested in seeing the book it is at: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/42902/ Westgarth, MW (2009) A Biographical Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Antique and Curiosity Dealers. Regional Furniture, XXIII . Regional Furniture Society.

White Rose Etheses Online passes 1000

We now have over 1000 doctoral theses in the White Rose Etheses Online (WREO) service – the companion service to White Rose Research Online. Some theses are temporarily embargoed but most are immediately and freely available to all who wish to read them.
Our Google Analytics usage data show we are attracting readers from around the globe. Readers in the UK are the heaviest users of the service, followed by the USA, India and Canada.
WREO hosts recently awarded theses deposited by their authors plus older theses digitised by the British Library’s EThOS service or provided by individual departments and alumni.
For further information about WREO see our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Theses deposited in WREO are available through Google, Google Scholar, the British Library’s EThOS service and the DART Europe E-theses Portal.

Has making your research openly available changed its impact?

Respondents sought for a questionnaire about the "green road" to open access. The "green road" means making a copy of your research publications available online - ideally in an open access repository such as White Rose Research Online. The research is being undertaken at the Institution of Library and Information Science, Uppsala University, Sweden.

The survey aims to reach "...researchers from all disciplines, with experience of publishing research articles in both traditional non-OA channels and of self-archiving in institutional and/or subject based open archives. "

The survey will be available until March 2nd 2011.
https://survey.mamut.com/s?s=20424