Repository and Publications Q&A

Post your comments and questions below concerning QMRO, PubLists and the Staff Publications website.

Open Access - co-operation between funders, academics and libraries

Announcements have been popping up all over after a very successful Open Access Week, and JISC Future of Research Conference outlining co-operative efforts between academics, funders and libraries to support open access.

More highlights from both events to come

QMRO update

We've been working hard in the background of the repository, QMRO, to make improvements before launching the service to the public.  Most of these improvements have been concerned with mapping fields in PubLists to the right fields in DSpace so that a useful set of information about the item is displayed.  This has caused some problems and having applied a new set of configurations is still not quite right.

We're also moving to a new domain name for QMRO http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk which will be the permanent URL for the service once it has been launched.  Unfortunately, work on this has been only partly successful and the site has been temporarily taken offline.  Please also be aware that QMRO downtime means that there will be no full text upload service via PubLists.  The rest of PubLists is working as normal.

We hope to have the repository back online by Monday 1st November, but watch this space.

There is still much to do with the repository, but we are making progress and hope to have a public launch date soon.

Open Access Week 2010!

Visit Open Access Week

Importing publications into PubLists

With REF dry-run coming up, there have been lots of queries about using the file importer in PubLists to complete publications lists with items not collected automatically.  This should be simple and easy, once you have the right information.

• The importer is under the 'my elements' tab 
• Export the file from your reference software in RIS or BibTex format
• Duplicates should be identified by the importer
• Check your publications list afterwards to make sure everything has been imported correctly

Imported references show up as manual publications in PubLists and are therefore automatically approved.  They will, however, be flagged as 'unverified' until a member of the PubLists team has checked them for accuracy and completeness.

There is a guide under the help link in PubLists which shows you how to import and export in PubLists, for more information or further help email publists@qmul.ac.uk 

Repository Fringe 2010

Just back from 3 days in lovely Edinburgh at the Repository Fringe 2010 event.  An excellent mix of technical and user facing expertise and knowledge, and lots of discussion about the hot topics in repositories and research support.

I also made my first foray into presenting at an event on the JISC RePosit project at the Fringe, if you're interested in this partnership between Leeds, Keele, Exeter, Plymouth and Queen Mary universities and Symplectic Ltd.  you can follow us on Twitter or sign up to our Google Group

Let us know your thoughts.

Depositing for beginners... (journal articles)

A simple guide to what to think about when depositing in QMRO:

1. the repository is open access, nothing confidential please
2. if you are not sure which version of your item can be made public in the repository, speak to a member of the team: QMRO repository team
3. when uploading, make sure you grant rights by clicking on the link in PubLists 
4. we want to be able to make as much of your research output available as possible 
• if we cannot deposit the version you initially supply we will contact you for a suitable alternative if copyright permits
• please be prepared to supply an alternative version by keeping working and original submission versions
5. Versions:

• pre-print - the one you submitted to the publisher initially
• post-print - the one they supplied back to you after refereeing
• publisher PDF - the one that got published with all the publisher's formatting

No two publishers have the same policy when it comes to open access, and some have different policies for different journal titles, so please be patient we want to get your submitted content public as soon as possible but sometimes this might take a little bit of time to sort out.

JISC Reports on Open Access

JISC published a report of research: Modelling Scholarly Communication Options: costs and benefits for universities carried out for them by Alma Swan from Key Perspectives.  The accompanying How to guide: How to build a case for university policies and practices in support of Open Access and briefing paper Publishing Research Papers: which policies will deliver best value for your university? may be very useful for senior executive or governing bodies of institutions considering moving towards a more comprehensive Open Access model for research publication.

An ever-growing backlog

Whilst the repository staff beaver away, attempting to work through some of the backlog of new deposits to the repository, all I can focus on is the fact that we have a backlog in the first place.  It is very comforting to know that there are some early adopters out there, willing and ready to get content into the repository and offer us an opportunity to go public with something substantial.

The barriers to going public are almost resolved, and hopefully this means the repository should be available in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, keep that content coming!

Repositories and publications blog

Welcome to the Repositories and Publications blog!

Aimed at helping academics and researchers find their way through the minefields that are Open Access archiving, Institutional Repositories and Research Publications Management.

I'm hoping to build a corpus of information, useful links and special events to help myself keep track of what's happening and what's useful.  So, comments, suggestions and recommendations readily accepted.  If you find it useful for Scholarly Communication, then I want to know about it.

Are we there yet?

You start with an ideal... and then you wait.  And if you're really unlucky, you wait a bit more.  If you're a bit impatient, like me, waiting for someone to give you the green light can seem interminable. 

There's a reason the phrase, 'so close yet so far' is a favourite of mine.  It feels like we've been 'almost there' for so long that we might never actually arrive.

There are complex and often time-consuming decisions to make regarding a repository, talk to someone in the repository community and you'll hear them often, talk to someone else and they will have no idea what you're going on about.  Is that part of the problem?  We talk about making research public, about communication and dissemination, but are we as a community becoming so insular that we are part of the problem? 

Here at least we are finally so near arriving that it's tangible.  This thing that I've been working towards for so long is finally here.  But what then?  A new phase, a new stage of the journey, and more development.  See, having a live public repository is only the beginning, the journey is endless and there are still more exciting adventures out there...