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.

Making research data count

Are you a researcher interested in metrics that could track and measure the impact of research data? We invite you to contribute to a short survey which aims to learn what metrics would be useful to you. Responses will feed into a project with the ultimate goal of designing and developing metrics that track and measure data use, creating 'data-level metrics' (DLM).

California Digital Library (CDL), the Public Library of Science (PLOS), and the Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) are investigating researcher attitudes towards potential metrics for datasets.

See the Making Data Count project site for more information.

Access the survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/makedatacount

We all know that data are important for research. So how can we quantify that? How can you get credit for the data you produce? What do you want to know about how your data is used? If you are a researcher or data manager, we want to hear from you. Take this 5-10 minute survey and help us craft data-level metrics.

[http://blogs.plos.org/tech/how-do-you-do-data/]

Open access home for St Andrews housing report

The Centre for Housing Research at the University of St Andrews released a new report just before the end of 2013. 'Growing economies and building homes: Reconciling growth and housing wellbeing in St Andrews' examines the impacts of University led growth on the rental housing market in North East Fife. A University press release noted:

The study has found while the success and growth of the 600-year-old University has brought prosperity and employment to Fife, existing pressures on local housing have been increased by an influx of students and staff.

This has added to the disadvantage experienced by some in the local community, most importantly, people on low incomes who have had to look further and further from St Andrews in the search for affordable accommodation.

The CHR report raises important issues and was read with great interest by staff in the Library. In order to ensure high visibility and a permanent home, the report is now available from our institutional repository. We hope that this will encourage further interest in the local community, and we will be able to track usage through our embedded statistics feature.


Maclennan, D, O'Sullivan, T, Maynard, K, Sila-Nowicka, K & Walden, Y. 2013. Growing economies and building homes: Reconciling growth and housing wellbeing in St Andrews. University of St Andrews. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/4316

NEW: Public stats now available for Research@StAndrews:FullText

We are delighted that we are now able to show usage statistics for content in our institutional repository, Research@StAndrews:FullText. Thanks to the services provided by the Scottish Digital Library Consortium (SDLC), we now have 'page views' and 'downloads' from Google Analytics integrated into our DSpace platform and publicly available.

Visitors to the repository can see statistics for individual items:

Statistics initially show how many times the metadata for an item has been viewed, and from the 'View Statistics' button users can see a breakdown by date range, plus the number of times the full text has been downloaded.

Visitors can also view the 'Top items' for a particular Collection:

with live links from the list of items to the most viewed item in that Collection.

To improve usability, links to the full text files have been moved to a more accessible position on the page, immediately above the Title.

Additional work has also been done to help capture more downloads that have been discovered via Google, and our overall statistics are already showing how we have recorded this traffic.

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