Policy Development for TARDis at the University of Southampton:

Dr. Jessie HeyUniversity Library and School of Electronics and Computer

Science, University of Southampton LEADIRS seminar, London, UK

6 Dec 2004 http://eprints.soton.ac.uk

Policy meets Practice in Building a Sustainable Institutional Repository for Research

The journey: the TARDis in transition

• A little history• Policy intertwined with practice –

the real world• A route map for a large

multidisciplinary research led university

• The next stage: a service supported by shared services

In an ideal world– all research is freely available

• June 27th 10th anniversary of Stevan Harnad’s ‘Subversive Proposal’ leading to the open access vision for scholarly material

• See also Harnad, S. and Hey, J. M. N. (1995) Esoteric Knowledge: the Scholar and Scholarly Publishing on the Net. In Proceedings of Networking and the Future of Libraries 2: Managing the Intellectual Record, Proceedings of an International Conference, Bath, 19-21 April 1995,  110-16. Dempsey, L., Law, D. and Mowlat, I., Eds.

Even the work of researchers in our own institution is often unavailable to us

Southampton early adopters

• EPrints software created at Southampton to enable the vision

• Some departments have culture of deposit locally (but not OAI compliant)

• Electronics and Computer Science use the software for publications database – now a sustainable repository (will be incorporated in e-Prints Soton)

The next steps

• Building on current visions:• Pauline Simpson (National Oceanographic Library) and others were

wanting to set up databases to enable provision for full text and/or manage research recording more efficiently

• one institution – collaboration between the Library, School of Electronics and Computer Science, and Information Systems Services to achieve this alongside academics

• FAIR – Focus on Access to Institutional Resources programme in UK

More specifically:• TARDis – Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and Disclosure

– investigating practical ways in which university research output can be made more freely available - more accessible, more rapidly – as a fundamental building block of e-research

An Institutional Research Repository for Southampton

• Institutional Repository for Research set up (e-Prints Soton) http://eprints.soton.ac.uk

• Southampton University Research e-Prints – essential

ingredient - working closely with ‘schools’

• TARDis: Feeding back into pioneering EPrints software good citation and information management practice experimenting with best balance of assisted deposit

• has capacity for adding full text (e-Prints) if available– Electronic copies of any research output e.g. journal

articles, book chapters, conference papers even multimedia

Early policy: Southampton’s Institutional Repository for all research

Service for deposit checking and additional information

Copyright issues diminishing

Common e-Print deposit:

Postprint =postrefereed pre-journal version

We provide link to published version for joined up picture

Fundamental impact on policy of current practice

Hey, Jessie M.N. (2004) An environmental assessment of research publication activity and related factors impacting the development of an Institutional e-Print Repository at the University of Southampton. Southampton, UK, University of Southampton, 19pp. (TARDis Project Report, D 3.1.2) http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/archive/00006218/

With much support from Natasha Lucas who has since provided

invaluable assisted deposit support

See also TARDis article in Ariadne http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/8986/

Sampling of faculty websites – assessing current practice

Department Total number of publications listed on Web

Full text on Web

Percentage of Publications with full text

Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences

Archaeology 252 2 1%

English 243 3 1%

Modern Languages 160 0 0%

Music 280 5 2%

Politics 138 6 4%

Economics 357 89 25%

Maths Education 170 34 20%

Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences

Biology 796 24 3%

Medicine 1603 247 15%

Health Professions and Rehabilitation Sciences 332 0 0%

Nursing and Midwifery 439 0 0%

Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics

Chemistry 1128 111 10%

Electronics and Computer Science 7008 866 12%

Mathematical Studies 849 310 37%

Ocean Circulation and Climate Group, SOES 286 9 3%

James Rennell Division, SOC 792 68 9%

Feedback: Perceived benefits to University, ‘School’s and Researchers

• Secure storage of publications

– including also theses and dissertations, technical reports

• Links to projects and web pages

• Research reporting• Interdisciplinary

research

• University profile• School and discipline visibility• Researcher profile• Full text content freely accessible

• link to learning and teaching

• Increased citationsArticles freely available online are more highly cited. For greater impact and faster

scientific progress, authors and publishers should aim to make research easy to access Nature, Volume 411, Number 6837, p. 521, 2001 Steve Lawrence “Online or Invisible?”

Benefit of adding a link to your web page – auto update

Benefit of high profile of e-Prints Soton – so give them full text and they can read

e-Prints Soton evolution

• Original intent to provide secure storage for the full text of Southampton research output (e-Print Archive including post refereed pre published versions of papers deposited by researchers)

• Feedback: maximum benefit if the exercise also assisted researchers with time consuming research reporting tasks: Research Assessment (RAE), University Research Report, web pages, research proposals, CVs etc

• Evolved to ‘hybrid’ publications database for all research output with full text where available

e-Prints Soton evolution: aiming for full moon at midnight

Achieving a slower but more sustainable model

• To achieve the original vision we are moving around the clock face

• Collaborating with academics to provide tailored valued services for different disciplines

• Aided by a fast moving shared international movement

All rising to great place is by a winding stairFrancis Bacon

Developing policy for sustainability

• Will be central to research recording and visibility for all disciplines

• Working to integrate as well as possible into the research recording workflow

• Working to incorporate UK research assessment data 2000-

• Initial support included for legacy import depending on availability of previous records

• Sustainability Goal: author (or close academic group) self deposit (plus some assisted central support where needed) for new records with full text deposit where practicable

Publisher policy check – a shared service

Next phase includes shared preservation services

• Act of creating database anticipates future preservation decisions

• Gained valuable practical experience with IR problems but shared services useful for common problems

• PRESERV (Preservation Services for EPrints) - part of new £1m UK JISC funding – partnering with National Archives File Format Registry (PRONOM) and the British Library

• Expertise of recently set up Digital Curation Centre also available

TARDis practice into policy

Southampton University Research Repository (e-Prints Soton) offers a practical growing example of building a sustainable Institutional Research Repository model in an escalating global movement

Will contribute to shared preservation services and shared rich search and citation services to support the next stage towards open access

e.g. ePrints UK, CiteBase and Google Scholar

and to end with the local news………

Transition to University Policy

University management (agreed Nov 2004) will support the next stage of a library managed repository for key role in research recording and visibility tasks

Proposal submitted by University Librarian Praise for collaborative approach with schools

Collaboration with Information Systems Services and School of Electronics and Computer Science will continue although TARDis will complete its transition to invisibility early in 2005

From TARDis to Southampton University Research e-Prints

Thank you,

Jessie Hey (jessie.hey@soton.ac.uk)

Southampton University Research http://eprints.soton.ac.uk eprints@soton.ac.uk

Pauline Simpson – TARDis project managerNatasha Lucas – survey and assisted supportLes Carr, Tim Brody and Chris Gutteridge – GNU EPrintsAnd many enterprising academics stretching the boundaries