5000th repository item - update

This is a quick update on the 5000th item in the repository we highlighted back in February: A phenomenological-enactive theory of the minimal self, by Brett Welch. We sent Brett a copy of Martin Paul Eve’s book Open Access and the Humanities as a prize. Last week he received the book and was kind enough to send us a picture (we especially like the Saltire in the background!)

You can read Brett's thesis here:  http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6043 

Martin Paul Eve's book is also freely available to download and read online through our library catalogue, here: http://library.st-andrews.ac.uk/record=b2173431~S5

5000 items celebration notable deposits

Following the post on our 5000th item readers might be interested in some deposits into Research@StAndrews:FullText occurring at the same time that stand out for various reasons in terms of their publication paths:

REF deposits
1. User support for managed immersive education : an evaluation of in-world training for OpenSim
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6047

This article was sourced by the Library in preparation for the introduction of the HEFCE Open Access requirement for REF admissibility. In this case the 3-month window from the point of acceptance for deposit doesn't apply, as the policy does not start until 1 April 2016.

Embargoes ending
2. New class of metal bound molecular switches involving H-tautomerism
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6050

This accepted manuscript has just been released from publisher embargo. As it was deposited within 3 months of acceptance it would satisfy the HEFCE Open Access requirement.

3. Development of autobiographical memory in children with autism spectrum disorders : deficits, gains, and predictors of performance
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6045

4. China's resource diplomacy in Africa : powering development?
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6046

3&4 are both articles published by Cambridge University Press and recently out of embargo, deposited as publisher pdfs which was permitted under its old policy. CUP last year changed its policy and the version of record is no longer permitted on institutional repositories. This shows that publisher policies need to be constantly monitored - work that is done within the the Library Open Access and Research Publications Support Team (OARPS).

Gold OA
5. The use of genome wide association methods to investigate pathogenicity, population structure and serovar in Haemophilus parasuis
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6074

6. Selective modification of the β-β linkage in DDQ-treated Kraft lignin analysed by 2D NMR spectroscopy
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6056

7. Observing the clouds : a survey and taxonomy of cloud monitoring
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6053

5-7 Are all Gold (author pays) articles that have been published under the most liberal Creative Commons licences (CC-BY) often mandated by funding agencies. HEFCE does not mandate a particular licence under its policy.

This publication route means that the version of record can be deposited into Research@StAndrews:FullText; in these cases the author’s accepted manuscript is still archived in our system to show compliance with the HEFCE Policy, but the final Open Access article can be added later.

Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (IRUS-UK) downloads*
We have previously blogged about IRUS-UK's role supporting the work of institutional repositories.  As a University Library we want to see St Andrews research publications optimally available. The figures below give some idea of the most popular content downloaded January 2014 - January 2015 (downloads in brackets):

Sex differences in impulsivity: a meta-analysis (980)

http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2161
A new metric for probability distributions (819)
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1591
Retrospective power analysis (715)
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/679
Mediaeval and modern concepts of race and ethnicity (694)
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1869
Hypervalent adducts of chalcogen-containing peri-substituted napthalenes; reactions of sulfut, selenium and tellurium with dihalogens (618)
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1918

Source: IRUS-UK Article Report 4 (AR4)
*IRUS-UK collects raw usage data from UK IRs and processes these data into COUNTER-compliant statistics. This provides repositories with comparable, authoritative, standards-based data.

We now have 5000 items in the repository!

We’ve reached another milestone! We now have over 5000 items in the repository, with a variety of research outputs including theses, reports, books, chapters, journal articles completely free and available for anyone to read.

We have reached this milestone in only 6 months, whereas the previous 1000 milestones took around 12 months. The graph above reflects the recent upsurge in activity. This is largely a response to two recent policies that have helped to reshape the UK higher education publishing landscape. Firstly, Research Councils UK (RCUK) produced an open access mandate requiring RCUK funded authors to make their research outputs open access either by paying an Article Processing Charge (APC) for "gold" access, or by depositing an accepted manuscript in a repository ("green" open access). RCUK later requested a report by institutions who had received a block grant to fund APC payments. They wanted to see where the money had been spent and how much impact the money was having on open access compliance. The library produced a report in September 2014 that showed our compliance rate at 71%, which comparatively speaking was excellent. This involved a lot of communication between the Open Access team and academic colleagues to ensure that those with RCUK grants knew about  the open access requirements. The reaction from the academic community was very positive, and this is reflected in the 71% figure.

The second big motivator contributing to the increased activity is undoubtedly the HEFCE open access policy for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF).  In a nutshell, the policy states that articles and conference proceedings must be deposited in a repository when they are accepted for publication in order to be included in the next REF. Although the policy doesn’t come into effect until April 2016, the Open Access team has been working hard over the past few months promoting the message, and ensuring that the research community is compliant well in advance. The Open Access team have delivered presentations at Physics and Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Economics & Finance, Management, Computer Science, Philosophy, and History. We have also been invited to Earth & Environmental Sciences and Medicine. In support of the presentations we have also been communicating the message through email, having contacted over 80 authors in 16 Schools and Departments across the University.

Copyright Stephen Ritt, CC-BY-SA

We continue to have electronic deposit of our postgraduate research theses into Research@StAndrews:FullText according to University regulations, and the 5000th item in the repository was the PhD thesis A phenomenological-enactive theory of the minimal self, authored by Brett Welch. The thesis presents a fascinating study of self-hood derived from two areas of research: phenomenology and enactivism. To mark the occasion we will be sending a copy of the book Open Access and the Humanities by Martin Paul Eve to Brett at his home in the United States. Martin Eve's book is available open access from the publisher's website and in print form.

The repository holds theses going back to 1949 and, at the time of writing, theses account for 35% of the content, totalling 1,752 items. David Collins is the thesis contact in the OARPS team, and the person responsible for archiving and mediating the deposit of most of the thesis content in the repository. The work involved in obtaining permissions to archive theses is complex and requires a great deal of time and effort. But the rewards for doing so are great as it increases the visibility of the theses and also showcases the high quality postgraduate research the University of St Andrews is famous for.

In the preface to Martin Eve's book, Peter Suber (who's book entitled Open Access is also available freely from publisher) writes about the difference in open access uptake between the humanities and the sciences. He suggests that the reason the humanities have been slower to adopt open access has nothing to do with lack of desire, but is rather because there are fewer working examples of open access in the humanities to prove that it works. We think that it is safe to say that Brett's thesis adds to the body of working examples we have collected in the repository, and, hopefully, it can prove to be an inspiration to others.

Well done to Brett!