What does repository deposit mean?

Follow-up to Theses and early draft deposit in repositories: is that publication? from WRAP repository blog

Last week I attended a meeting with some publishers and it seems to me that there is considerable potential for confusion amongst those not involved in repository management, about what repository deposit actually means. The two main areas of confusion seem to be:

1) Not all content in all repositories is necessarily open access. Some repositories have metadata-only records along with some records which also have full text items available on open access. Some also have full text items that are locked such that only repository staff and the author can see them, or such that only members of the institution can see them. Some repositories add a "request a copy" button to their records so that those who can't see the locked full text can request it from the author. Sometimes the locked access is in order to meet a publisher's requirement or sometimes it is because the author prefers that requests are sent to him/herself so that s/he can know who is reading his/her work.

Publishers' agreements with authors and their information about what can and can't be done usually refer to whether repository deposit is allowed or not. I suspect that more of them would allow repository deposit if the article were locked to be accessible only within the institution or only to the author and repository staff.

2) Just because an item is available on open access, that does not mean that it is available for further copying by anyone! Publishers might also be more inclined to allow repository deposit and open access availability if they knew that allowing this is not granting permission for others to on-copy from the repository. Some repositories do also ask authors to grant a Creative Commons (CC) licence for the use of the article they deposit, and when this is the case then the article will also be available for further copying. Authors can do this when it is clear that they own the copyright themselves. Those repositories which do use the CC licence don't all expect every single item they hold to be deposited with such a licence, although perhaps that would be an ideal scenario. WRAP isn't one of those repositories which asks authors to sign a CC licence, for now. It would just be another hurdle to deposit and our main aim is to make the works available without subscription barrier.

Publishers' agreements with authors who have paid for their article to be made available on open access on the publishers' site do not state that repository deposit is also allowed, although it seems that (some, at least) do expect that to be the case without their stating it. Perhaps their agreements with the authors do grant copyright back to the authors and that's why they expect it, but it's not always clear to repository managers that this is the case.

We don't put open access articles into the WRAP repository unless permission is expressly granted by the publisher or clearly owned and granted by the author. Open access seems to have been conflated with waiving of copyright, but copyright still exists in open access works. BioMed Central are very clear that their open access articles can be further copied, and they state how, etc, so they're an example of how open access should be handled by publishers, in my opinion. This is another reason that I wouldn't consider deposit in WRAP to be a form of publication. WRAP has no copyright owndership over the works it holds: that still rests with the rights owners.

For WRAP, we are clear that we want full text, to be made available on open access for all journal articles and for as many PhD theses as possible. We don't have metadata-only records for journal articles but we do for theses, and we also allow theses to be deposited but locked to repository staff only. The works in WRAP are not made available with any particular licence and rights owners would still need to be consulted before further copying could be done.

It seems to me that there are so many different flavours of repository, all with ever so slightly different aims and purposes and so we're all doing slightly different things with them. No wonder there is so much potential for confusion! In any case, I was very glad to begin speaking to publishers as I did last week with some representatives from the Highwire publishers, in my role as Chair of the UK Council of Research Repositories.

Jenny Delasalle : 14 Dec 2009 10:41 |  Tags: Authors Copyright Open Access Publishers Theses |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Overlapping alerts

We began monitoring Web of Science alerts by affiliation to Warwick in June this year, and for a few months over the summer, we were monitoring both these and the Zetoc alerts by author surname and initial for the Economics department. I did a little comparing to see if there was much crossover of the two alerting services.

In brief, from June to October we were alerted to 3 articles by Zetoc and 5 by WoS. One of those WoS articles was one that Zetoc had already alerted us to in May. One was for a new member of staff not yet added to our list of names monitored by Zetoc, and two of the other three WoS alerts were also alerted to us by Zetoc. So we had one article from each alerting service that the other appeared not to cover.

It's not really enough to conclude anything from, but the reason we're not monitoring Zetoc alerts for Economics any more is simply one of staff time: WoS alerts take a lot less effort to monitor!

Jenny Delasalle : 08 Dec 2009 10:32 |  Tags: Alerts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Survey on Open Access and features of a repository

Writing about web page http://www.dini.de/projekte/oa-statistik/english/

This survey asks about how many scientific publications a month you read and how many of them were open access. I had to confess that I had no idea about the open access status of the articles I read!

I don't read all that many articles which I would class as scientific. Some are articles in Southampton's repository, so I know that they're open access! But I do also read less scientific stuff, like in the THE which I know is subscription based. Occasionally I might find something on Business Source Premier or Science Direct and I know that those articles are not open access. But generally, I don't keep track of such things and I guess that if I don't, most researchers won't either. As long as there is access, that is all any of us want to know!

It does happen, about two or three times a year, that I can't read a journal article that I am interested in. I'm at a well resourced institution and I read relatively few scholarly articles (compared to a researcher), so I wonder how often researchers do come across articles that they can't read.

Other questions in the survey are about the way we like to discover content and how we might like to link between that content and other articles, so they are functions that repositories might offer. The more sophisticated the functions are, the more "stuff" I will come across and the more sophisticated my information navigation skills need to be, and even if some of those functions are designed to help me sort the content in quality order, would I really trust the mechanisms on offer? I much prefer to find stuff through my networks of people who I know and trust, than by polls/reviews by strangers or metrics measured by computer software.

I answered the questions from my personal perspective, rather than what I thought other readers might like to use. I'm not a typical reader of research articles, so I'm not sure how helpful my answers will have been.

I also think that someone completing the survey who is a typical reader might find some conflict between their roles as reader and as a writer,  because most scientists will be both. As a reader, you might not want to know how many other visits there have been to a paper, or other measures of how popular they were (like me, preferring to rely on existing community sources), but as an author, that could be very useful information. Will all respondents think about the questions from both points of view? We know that relatively few are depositing!

I also said that it would be very useful to have an indication of the overall usage of a repository. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?!

Jenny Delasalle : 03 Dec 2009 12:41 |  Tags: Authors Open Access |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Telling a success story

Writing about web page http://go.warwick.ac.uk/repositories

WRAP reached its 2000th live item last week. We made a little news article about it for the library's home page and news feeds, including on Twitter and Facebook. We asked the University's central communications team to publicise it for us, as we did when we reached 1000 items. But whereas that was a big splash at a time of not many other news stories so we got a front page link on the University home page, this time we only got a mention on a news and events page that is buried inside the staff area of the Intranet.

We reached 1000 items in mid July when there weren't many staff around to read about it, which we thought was a shame. But now, even though there are plenty of people around, there is so much else competing for their attention that our 2000th item has passed with hardly a mention. Perhaps reaching 1000 over the summer was a blessing after all!

The 2000th item news went out on Thursday last week, and so far as I can tell the impact so far has been...

1) Two deposits from authors we've not previously been in touch with and a very slightly higher number of visitors to our deposit form - 24 in one day when the highest peak in previous weeks was 21. NB we still don't get anywhere near as many deposits as we do visitors to that form!

2) A handful more visitors to our main page about repositories at Warwick (linked). By which I mean a peak of 53 visits on Thursday when previous high peaks were 40/41.

3) Our approach towards 600 visits a day on WRAP itself was maintained last week. On Monday we reached 595 visits which was great. By Wednesday we'd slumped to 567 (still pretty high!) and on Thursday we were back at 588 visits.

4) The 2000th item which was linked to directly from our news stories attracted 15 visits, to date.

I shall continue to monitor visitor numbers to WRAP and to the 2000th item. Because I was busy last week, I didn't have time to write to the authors to explain to them, which I still intend to do. I also didn't find time to blog about our achievement here, which I've now done...

When we reached 1000 items we were also mentioned in a press release from the JISC, so that would no doubt have had more of an impact. Perhaps we will get more publicity from the JISC and from our University communications team when we reach 10,000!

There are many success stories to tell about a repository. The total number of items in it is a simple one, and reaching a first significant milestone is important.

The speed and consistency of growth is another type of success story. We took 11 months to reach our first 1000 items, and it took us just under 4 months to reach 2000. The story that tells is that it took us a relatively long time to sort out all our processes until they were optimised. I believe that it will take us longer than another 4 months to reach 3000 items (for various reasons but partly because of the need to process theses which take longer), but not significantly so. We can keep growing WRAP's collection in much the same way as we have been doing.

The quality of the items we have collected is a more difficult story to tell but I think that the most interesting number in this blog posting is that we are getting almost 600 visits daily. With only just 2000 items for people to be looking at. My feeling is that this is a significant part of WRAP's success story. People are reading the content and that is what gives us the motivation to go out there and get more!

Jenny Delasalle : 09 Nov 2009 17:04 |  Tags: Advocacy Google Analytics Statistics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reporting on statistics

Writing about web page http://writetoreply.org/actually/2009/10/28/thinking-about-user-tracking-on-writetoreply/

I just asked on the UKCoRR list about Google Analytics, after forwarding a link to Tony Hirst's blog, as recommended by Andy McGregor of the JISC.

The replies got me thinking about how we use the statistics that we get from GA. Some repo managers are writing regular monthly reports for managers, as blogged by the CADAIR team: http://welshrepositorynetwork.blogspot.com/2009/10/statistics.html

I look at the stats at least once a month, in order to write to our "top content" authors. I use that e-mail as a way of promoting WRAP to the authors, especially those who might not be aware of WRAP or that their article is in the repository. (Deposited by co-authors or administrators on their behalf.) It has resulted in raised awareness, some goodwill and conversations about WRAP but has never led directly to further deposits - yet. I have copied the heads of department in to some of these e-mails, when I know the author is already comfortable and happy with WRAP, although I've no idea whether they pay any attention to the e-mails!

What do I say to our top content authors? Here's a template, which I don't often have to vary much....

I'm writing to inform you that your paper in WRAP: (REFERENCE)

Is the most popular paper in WRAP in the last month. I'm keeping our highly read authors informed of what I can about the visitors to their content. I should point out that it is actually the record that is being visited/read, rather than the full text itself. There have been NUMBER pageviews of the record describing your paper from DATE to DATE. All visitors came from a search engine, the vast majority from Google. Most looked at the record and went away again, but some explored the subject area in WRAP.

There is a great variety of keywords that have led visitors to your paper, including the following: (LIST KEYWORDS)

Visitors came to your record from NUMBER different networks, so it is not all Warwick people looking at your work. Noticeably academic/educational networks that your visitors came from include:

The vast majority (NUMBER) of visits were from within the UK, but your paper's record had visits from....PLACES.

There have been no great peaks and troughs of activity: visits come every day and remain at or under NUMBER per day.

I did a quick Google search for PAPER'S TITLE and your paper's WRAP record is Xth in the results list.

Whilst looking at the stats I might spot something interesting, which I would usually blog about here and write to people in the library who I think ought to know: managers and subject librarians, or even our internal e-mail newsletter to all staff.

I know that our library management group are interested in big numbers, like how many pageviews there have been since we went live, from how many hundreds of countries/territories, etc. They want to illustrate the success story that we're gaining in visitors every week as we grow in content ever more rapidly! In compiling such a news piece, I might look at our growth chart on ROAR as well, or at the number of items we hold for a particular department, to provide further background information about the interesting pattern.

I also send out a "newsletter" once a term, by e-mail to people who are interested in hearing more about WRAP. I know that they're interested because I introduced an "I would like to hear more" tick box onto the deposit form and they ticked it!

Otherwise, statistics might make their way into my presentations to departments or articles that I write to raise awareness of WRAP, or onto our web pages about the repository. They are something to say when we talk about WRAP and it's important to be able to give the detail and context that they provide, to keep people interested in our work.

Jenny Delasalle : 30 Oct 2009 15:52 |  Tags: Advocacy Google Analytics Statistics |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Theses and early draft deposit in repositories: is that publication?

Does repository deposit of a work constitute publication and as such jeopardise the chances of publication by a more prestigious/established/profitable method and another agent?

It's not really a question that I can answer yet. I am certain that repository deposit ought not to cause any problems with regard to publication elsewhere, and I have not come across evidence to prove that it would cause a problem except in one particular instance that I investigated and which I describe below. But I'd like to gather more evidence on the topic because I can't prove that it isn't a problem either!

I do not usually like authors to deposit unpublished papers to WRAP. Part of my reason for that is that we want the highest quality content we can get: if the article has been accepted for publication, then that is some measure of quality. PhD theses are obviously of high quality and a separate case in their own right from this point of view: these are added to WRAP.

Quality issues aside, if an author were to write a paper with the intention of submitting it to a journal but wanted to make it available on OA as soon as possible through repository deposit (never happened yet although we've had some that have been accepted and are forthcoming), I would advise that author to look at the journal publisher's copyright agreement that s/he would be asked to sign. I know of at least one publisher who would consider repository deposit of the paper to constitute a prior publication, thus preventing the author from being able to sign the copyright form stating that it had not previously been published elsewhere: this was the British Psychological Society, who I investigated over a year ago.

Inability to sign the standard copyright form might mean that the work could never be published in that journal or by that publisher, but alternatively the form might be amended. I expect that the publisher's position would depend upon the precise circumstances. 

It occurs to me that the matter of an early version of a paper is probably different than that of a thesis from which a book or article might be published: after all, the content would have to be substantially re-written from a thesis, whilst different versions of papers might be very similar, so a publisher might be more concerned about repository deposit of papers but not as worried about thesis deposit.

Of course, our students can opt out of their thesis being made available in WRAP, even though they do have to submit it. So, if a student was hoping to be published and was unsure of the publisher's policy then s/he could always embargo the repository version from being made available anyway.

This is a big issue, and one that needs more thought and investigation, I believe. Because I would like to be able to advise students to allow repository availability of their theses, knowing more about how publishers would react.

Jenny Delasalle : 05 Oct 2009 13:44 |  Tags: Copyright Publishers Theses |  Comments (8) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Visitor pattern over the summer

I'm just back from a lovely break in Australia, and I'm pleased to see that our visitor numbers are up again, as the Autumn term is about to start here and is no doubt underway elsewhere. Looking at the graph of visits to WRAP over the last year, there is a clear sag over the summer down to about 200 visitors on a week day, but we're back up to around 400 again now and I hope that we continue to grow in visitor numbers as the amount of content also grows.

We're way past the 1000 mark that we reached at the beginning of the summer break: over 1600 items now, and growing fast!

Jenny Delasalle : 29 Sep 2009 11:49 |  Tags: Google Analytics Statistics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Theses from the past

Writing about web page http://ethos.bl.uk/

We have added over 200 theses to WRAP, including those digitised through the BL EThOS project, as well as those submitted electronically in the last year.

We chose not to contact former students in advance of allowing the BL to digitise theses, and since adding content to WRAP we have had three requests to take the content down, all of which we have dealt with within 24 hours of receiving the request. Two out of our three requesters were unaware of the EThOS copies and I believe that this is because WRAP content is indexed by Google and hence is easily findable, whilst EThOS content is not picked up by Google (at present).

Are we right not to contact the former students in advance? Well I think it is worth following the approach that we have done because we are trying to assist in scholarly research and to raise the authors' academic profiles through the availability (and longer term preservation) of their work, and we are not attempting to make a profit from their work.

I do have experience of trying to contact former students from a secondment I did to our Careers Service, where I ran one year's Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey. It is an extremely time consuming and resource intensive process, involving letters, e-mails and telephone calls (some in foreign languages as we got through to family) to chase the former students, at both UG and PG levels, in order to achieve something close to an 80% response rate. That is just to get a response at all from either the student or someone related to the student, who knew their career progress, which of course is a different matter than attempting to get permission to digitise a thesis.

In comparison, our three requests represent only just over 1% of requested theses not available to the scholarly community, if I don't count those which we already refuse because there are embargoes against photocopying in place.

Note that these theses are not all recently written: one dates back to 1983. The chances of us being able to track down that author through either the details they left behind on our records or even through the former supervisor are very, very slim indeed.

I am very pleased that so much quality work is now available for the scholarly community, to assist in academic research. However, I will continue to monitor whether we have taken the right approach or not, in not contacting authors directly.

Jenny Delasalle : 02 Sep 2009 10:22 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Busy with theses

Recent additions to WRAP have been nearly all theses, and today we have added our first multi-media item (http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1156/). This is partly because we get batches of theses through from the Graduate School, so our metadata librarian deals with them all in one go, and partly also because the E-repositories assistant who processes submissions through our deposit form has been on holiday for two weeks, and then again partly because, when I tried to process some items in her absence, we have been locked out of Sherpa Romeo and all things on the Nottingham Uni web domain and that has only been fixed for me today!

So, theses it has been: both the ones submitted to us in the last academic year, and also the ones digitised through the Ethos project. We could have waited for Ethos to send us them in a download, but we decided to download them individually for ourselves.

Hopefully we will be back to more of a balance with journal articles very soon, however, as our E-repositories assistant returns tomorrow...

Meanwhile, I am busy preparing for my first meeting of the UK Council of Research Repositories as their chair, which is on Friday.

Jenny Delasalle : 11 Aug 2009 17:10 |  Tags: Theses |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

We made it to the front page :–)

Follow-up to A huge milestone: 1000 items! from WRAP repository blog

Yesterday we were on the front of the University's website. We still are, if you hover over the News and Events heading...

Jenny Delasalle : 17 Jul 2009 17:00 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem