Repositories: extending the reach of research

Repositories such as our own Research@StAndrews:FullText are a great way to increase the visibility of research. It is also a way to extend the reach of research to those unable to afford the pricey subscriptions demanded by many publishers.

A great example of the benefits of depositing manuscripts in Research@StAndrews:FullText is Forgiving you is hard, but forgetting seems easy: can forgiveness facilitate forgetting? by Saima Noreen,  Raynett Bierman, and Malcolm David MacLeod.

The paper can be found in Research@StAndrews:FullText here http://hdl.handle.net/10023/4779.

Many people won't go directly to our repository to find content, but will instead rely on Google. The Google search results clearly show the favourable rankings of Research@StAndrews:FullText; of the 30,000 results the repository is ranked 2nd. So, someone looking to read the article might be inclined to click on the first link and go to publisher source first. However, upon clicking that link, unless they have a subscription they will be met with a pay-wall. This pay-wall is particularly expensive at $35 for a mere 24 hours!

So, repositories like Research@StAndrews:FullText provide the second option: an accepted manuscript with all the same information as the published version, but free of charge (and with no time constraints!)

The Repository: helping to feed the impact of research

Over the years, the OARPS team has spent a great deal of time acquiring academic manuscripts and releasing them to the world through the repository.

Much of our current work involves assisting academics with complying with funder open access mandates. For instance, the RCUK mandate states that RCUK funded research papers should be made Open Access either by choosing "Gold" and paying an APC charge, or by choosing "Green" and uploading the accepted manuscript of the final article to Pure (and then the library can transfer the paper to the repository).

Presently, the team focus has incorporated the new HEFCE open access policy for the next REF as well. The HEFCE open access policy states that in order to be eligible, the accepted manuscripts of articles and conference proceedings (with an ISSN) must be deposited in a repository. The HEFCE open access policy does not come into effect until 2016, but we are tying to push the message now so that we are 100% compliant by that point.

With both these cases the result is more content in the repository. But with deposit being imposed from on high the other benefits of depositing can sometimes play second fiddle. In light if this, we have chosen to show some of the usage metrics from a recent article in the repository. We hope this demonstrates that archiving in the repository can greatly benefit the Impact of research.

A great example is The meanings of chimpanzee gestures which received a lot of media attention when it was published. The authors deposited the accepted manuscript for the article into Pure, which then allowed the OARPS team to get the manuscript into the repository.

Here are some of the repository usage stats for the article:

With statistics like this you have to read between the lines a little bit, but one thing they definitely show is that the article received a lot of attention in July (this was when the article was being covered in the media). Crucially, the stats also tell us that the vast majority of those visiting the page ended up downloading the document. This reliably indicates that the majority of people visiting the page did not have access to the publisher version.

So, with the manuscript in the repository a wider range of people, who do not have a subscription to the journal, can read the full article. This means it can be distributed more widely through society, thus widening the reach of the paper and helping to feed the impact of the research.

4000 items milestone: Featured researcher: Dr Fabiola Alvarez

In recent weeks we have been celebrating reaching 4000 items in the repository by showcasing some of the researchers who have been instrumental in attaining the milestone. We have already highlighted DR. Kim Mckee, Professor Derek Woollins, and Professor Alexandra Slawin for their invaluable input. In this blog we will be shining the spotlight on another researcher whilst also highlighting a highly important aspect of our repository: E-theses.

© University of St Andrews

Since September 2006 the University of St Andrews has required all theses to be submitted electronically to the repository. This has the advantage of making the details of research outputs immediately visible. In most instances the full text is also made available, thus increasing the visibility and impact of the research. One such thesis is The Scottish national screen agency: justifications of worth by Dr Fabiola Alvarez.

© University of St Andrews

Dr Fabiola Alvarez attained her PhD earlier this year. Her doctoral research was concerned primarily with the demise of the Scottish Screen agency for Scotland which was disbanded in 2010. In her thesis, Fabiola came to the conclusion that the incompatibility between different forms of valuation within the agency and among its stakeholders played a role in its demise, and specifically there were internal disagreements over the worth of projects which caused conflict over funding decisions.

We approached Dr Alvarez for her thoughts on Open Access:

"The thoughts that come to mind about open access is that it was definitely useful to me during my years as a PhD student (which obviously are still very fresh in my mind) and it continues to be so now that I'm working on my first academic paper. I hope that, by the same token, the possibility to easily access my and other people's work will be useful to others - not only students and academics, but also people working in other domains who, like me, would like to see a growing rapprochement between academic and non-academic activity."

© Scottish Screen

© Creative Scotland 2014

Creative Scotland has since taken the responsibility of distributing funding for Scottish creative arts. It is interesting to see that this year Creative Scotland set out a 10 year plan which aims to provide a "shared vision for the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland". Although it is not clear whether academic research influences public bodies, the value of such research being Open Access is that it helps to create further research and might positively influence public policy and decision making in the future – Fabiola’s vision of harmonious “academic and non-academic activity”.


So, from all of us in the Open Access and Research Publications Support (OARPS) team, thank you Dr Fabiola Alvarez for your contribution to the 4000 celebration.

Using doctoral theses in your research: a guide to EThOS

Do you want to find out how UK PhD theses can be accessed? Here is a quick reminder of a training webinar which is being organised by the EThOS team at the British Library:

Using doctoral theses in your research: a guide to EThOS.
EThOS (http://ethos.bl.uk) is the national database for PhD theses, managed by the British Library. It’s a fantastic resource for researchers, with over 100,000 UK theses freely available to download and use for your own research, and another 200,000 available to search and scan on demand. Find out how to search for and download theses, and what to do if a thesis isn’t available. If you’re a PhD student, find out what will happen to your thesis once it’s completed. We’ll also explain how EThOS works with UK universities to support the whole research cycle, making the theses more visible and available for new researchers to use and build on. 

The session takes place on Thursday 13 Feb 2014 at 15:00

Register to attend the webinar at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5974661878725146370
 
St Andrews is a fully participating member of EThOS. Find out more on our Library web pages

Highlighting open access outputs in School of Classics

Following collaboration between the Library repository team and School computing officers, the University of St Andrews School of Classics has developed new web pages highlighting content from Research@StAndrews:FullText.

Using RSS feeds and scripts to repurpose the data, the new Classics site provides a dynamic list of completed theses, with options to view abstracts and link to the full text. There are also handy links back to Library web pages with further information on finding theses and general advice on open access. (Note, not all theses are available to download immediately due to embargoes).

In addition there is a page that links to open access research publications by staff in Classics, all of which have full text available in Research@StAndrews:FullText

Our embedded usage stats show healthy downloads for some of these research outputs, for example 'Written Into the landscape : Latin epic and the landmarks of literary reception' (PhD thesis by James S McIntyre, 122 downloads) and 'Training athletes and explaining the past in Philostratus' Gymnasticus' (Book chapter by Dr Jason Konig, 70 downloads).

Link to School of Classics Postgraduate research and staff publications from http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/research/

Download statistics for November

Once again it is encouraging to see a range of content types being accessed from Research@StAndrews: FullText.

 
The list below of our top 10 most downloaded items in November 2011 includes articles, e-theses, a technical report and a book chapter.



Retrospective power analysis (Len Thomas)
Subverting space : Private, public and power in three Czechoslovak films from the 1960s and ‘70s (Elisabetta Girelli)
Comparing pre- and post-construction distributions of long-tailed ducks Clangula hyemalis in and around the Nysted offshore wind farm, Denmark (Petersen et al.)
Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland (Cormac Booth)
What is social learning? (Ioan Fazey)
The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism (William Young)
The economics of trade secrets : evidence from the Economic Espionage Act (Nicola C. Searle)
The quest for the fictional Jesus (Margaret E. Ramey)
The manual skills and cognition that lie behind hominid tool use (Richard Byrne)

The chart below illustrates the range of full text item types being submitted to the repository.

Open Access promotes Polar Research

The move of the journal Polar Research to an open access publisher has allowed us to highlight the results of a long-term survey in the Arctic. St Andrews researchers Tiago Marques and David Borchers are co-authors of: The effect of sea-ice loss on beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) in West Greenland, Polar Research, 29(2): 198-208.

Tiago and the survey team

David Borchers - CREEM; School of Mathematics and Statistics

“An aerial survey was conducted to estimate the abundance of belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) on their wintering ground in West Greenland in March–April 2006 and 2008. [...] These results, based on nearly 30 years of dedicated survey effort, are among the first available evidence showing a shift in distribution of an Arctic cetacean in response to changes in sea-ice coverage.”

Polar Research is now published by Co-Action Publishing with all content now freely available under a Creative Commons licence.

David Borchers has a number of CREEM reports already available in Research@Standrews:FullText

Tiago Marques already has his PhD thesis on distance sampling available in the repository, and has recently contributed another article: Estimating the Barents Sea polar bear subpopulation size in Marine Mammal Science 25(1). The article describes the importance of scientific methods for population sampling, given the "current intense interest in polar bear management due to the potentially disastrous effects of climate change".

Images taken during this large scale survey illustrate the dramatic Arctic terrain and the adventurous life some of our researchers lead!

Sea Mammal Research reaches wide audience

Assessing the effectiveness of conservation measures: resolving the “wicked” problem of the Steller sea lion was one of the first articles to be self-archived in Research@StAndrews:FullText following the implementation of our Research Information System, Pure. Professor Ian Boyd deposited the author version of his article and it is now in the Top 20 most viewed items in our repository.

Recently, Prof. Boyd has added his article An International Quiet Oceans Experiment, and we have had permission from the publisher of the journal Oceanography to make the published version available.

Along with all the recent e-theses deposited in the repository, this takes our total well over the 1000 items recently celebrated.

'Quest for the fictional Jesus' celebrated in Graduation Week

The item marking our 1000th item in Research@StAndrews:FullText is a thesis from the School of Divinity by Margaret Ramey - The quest for the fictional Jesus : Gospel rewrites, Gospel (re)interpretation, and Christological portraits within Jesus novels

Other theses deposited on the same day included:

The roles of the cathedral in the modern English Church, Peter Rowe - Divinity

Optically guided neuronal growth, David Carnegie - Physics & Astronomy

Enemy within the gates : reasons for the invasive success of a guppy population (Poecilia reticulata) in Trinidad, Caya Sievers - Biology


Authors attended a reception during Graduation week to celebrate their achievements with colleagues in the Library.

Landmark 1000 items in repository

We have now reached a landmark total of 1000 items in Research@StAndrews: Full text, the University's digital research repository. 

 

We will be featuring a number of theses and research publications that have contributed to this milestone over the next few weeks. Congratulations to all our authors whose work is now reaching a wider audience!

Most viewed items in Research@StAndrews:FullText

The article by Len Thomas Retrospective power analysis remains the most highly accessed article in Research@StAndrews:FullText, with 170 views in May 2011.

Also frequently viewed, our first thesis by portfolio to be deposited has proved of interest with 74 views:

The inferior vena caval compression theory of hypotension in obstetric spinal anaesthesia: studies in normal and preeclamptic pregnancy, a literature review and revision of fundamental concepts

The rest of the top 10 most viewed items are shown below.
The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism
Saint Peter and Paul Church (Sinan Pasha Mosque), Famagusta: a forgotten Gothic moment in Northern Cyprus
Understanding barriers to small business growth from the perspective of owner-managers in Russia
Global distributive justice
The consequences of Israel's counter terrorism policy
What is social learning?
Applications of microfluidic chips in optical manipulation & photoporation
Karl Barth's academic lectures on Ephesians (Göttingen, 1921-1922)

Recent publications in repository Top 10

February has seen several recently submitted research outputs appear in the Research@StAndrews:FullText 'Top 10'.

Among the most viewed items are a book chapter: Armenian Neighbours (600-1045), journal article: What is social learning? and a CREEM technical report: Density estimation implications of increasing ambient noise on beaked whale click detection and classification which has only been in the repository since January.

Retrospective power analysis by Len Thomas remains the most highly accessed item.

5 theses also appeared in the top 10 representing Art History, Divinity and Psychology:
The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism
"All of you are one" : the social vision of Gal 3:28, 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:11
Maintaining personhood and self-image in dementia : an exploration of collaborative communication
Bayesian and information-theoretic tools for neuroscience
Odoardo Fialetti (1573-c.1638): the interrelation of Venetian art and anatomy, and his importance in England

New Research Information System for St Andrews

A new Research Information System (RIS) using PURE software is currently being implemented at the University of St Andrews. The new PURE system brings together related content to build up an overview of St Andrews research activity including information about projects, events and publications.

The full text of research outputs can be added to Pure and where possible will be passed to Research@StAndrews:FullText, our open access digital repository.

A new Research@StAndrews portal will provide links to the full text of research publications which are stored in the repository.