or08: eprints track, session 2

After coffee a little more talk about new features and the future as we ran out of time before. Christopher Gutteridge has now turned up, he may have had a few grown up fizzy drinks last night.

(lost concentration here: salt grain take) Eprints plugin will try and pick when people enter their names wrong (e.g. get first/lastnames mixed up). Report an eprint (or report an issue with an eprint) link on item/record pages?

3.1 beta: should be released in a day or so. Live CD available.

When will the new template (for records/items) including related papers (or ‘people who liked this also liked…’), html designer working on this. Can recreate abstract pages daily for fresh data (e.g. i think for stats/other papers).

People come in via Google for an item and the leave again. Soton ecs put links to postgrad prospectus and more on abstract pages for items, found hits to postgrad prospectus tripled.

Talking about more finely grained controls ans privileges , i.e. who can edit what, and where, and giving people additional power. Includes, for example, this person can edit wording of fields/help, but not edit workflow.

11:42: now moving on to research assessment experience.

Bill Mortimer – Open University.

How Open used eprints to support the RAE experience.

used eprints as a publication database because it was publicly available and helped increase citations. Also because of the reporting tool developed for eprints.

Open use mediated deposit but also imported records and self deposit.

Only peer reviewed items in ORO. Had up to 7 temp ‘editors’ processing the buffer.

Very slow uptake when mediated. Now have just under 7,000 items in ORO.

Simplified the workflow (which of course ep3+ have improved). Researchers responsible for depositing items for RAE submission.

Pro: increased awareness (of IR) increased deposits.

con: overlap of perceptions of ORO and RAE process (some felt RAE took over the IR). Lots of records but only 16% carry full text (% of full text varied by department).

Slide with some future ideas, good, see presentation on (though not currently there) http://pubs.or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

12:06am

Susan Miles – Kingston

metdata only repository at the moment but plan to add content and full text this year.

uni departmental structure and hierarchy has been the most controversial thing. Didn’t use RAE tool, wasn’t out the box.

Subject team staff created records, but focused moved to collection of physical items. (some) staff really got in to the IR, but this had the downside that many left with their new skills and experience!

misc bits

  • non existent items
  • people trying to pass off others work
  • items being removed and then re-entered constantly at the last minute for the rae
  • over sees academics caused issues.
  • proof of performances and other ‘arts’ outputs were a challenge (next time get the academics to do it).
  • a barrel moving back and forth in a room was a piece of research to be submitted for the RAE (How. evidence, metadata)

Unexpected, but lots of interest in the IR across the University. But lots of things in the buffer and no staff.

University committee has endorsed the IR as the source of publication data.

Because of using subject team staff for IR RAE, subject support now have good knowledge of the IR, which is good.

12:27

Wendy from soton

higher profile in Uni due to RAE work means people are including her – and the IR – more in discussions across campus such as looking at the REF.

question (from me): were any academics reluctant/against their rae information being put online? Answer: no

[anon comment, etheses mandate being reviewed regarding animal rights issues etc]

William Nixon: also planning to upload rae data. Does not foresee any problems, BUT recommend to not flag items as rae08 as some academics may have issues with this.

Les: HEFCE put metadata for items submitted to rae on web anyway.

q for open: you are currently only published peer reviewed items, do you plan to change this.

a: yes reviewing.