Developing a Repository

ACRL 2009, Seattle

Overview

• BioMed Central: who we are

• Benefits of open access & setting up a repository

• About Open Repository

• Case Studies

• Questions and answers

BioMed Central – who are we?

• BioMed Central is the open access publisher committed to the free widespread dissemination of research, publishing peer-reviewed research across all areas of biology and medicine, with immediate, barrier-free open access for all

• BioMed Central’s business models to maintain our open access policy:

– Open access journals with article-processing charges and Membership

– Subscription-based content to value-added secondary resources e.g. Critical Care, Biology Image Library

– Institutional repository service - Open Repository

About BioMed Central

• Launched in 1999

• Publishes 200 journals; 74 tracked by ISI; 43 with impact factors

• Has approximately 300 member institutions in over 30 countries

• We encourage institutions to create central funds to cover open access costs and become advocates open access

Open access is an important step towards open science

• Enhances scholarly communication

• Research has more impact

• Increases Authors profile

• Readers get better access to funded research

• Improves visibility of an institutions research

• No subscription barriers

Open Access Mandates

• Funding Agency Mandateshttp://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/apcfaq#grantsFor example:

– NIH – Wellcome Trust UK and British Councils– Howard Hughes Medical Institutes– National Science Foundation, Canada

• Institutional MandatesFor example:

– University of California, Berkeley– Harvard University

Mandates

• The US National Science Foundation (NSF)

• The US National Research Council

• Canadian Cancer Research Institutes

• Norwegian Research Council open access mandate

• German government to re-evaluate the open access proposal rejected in 2006. 

• Australia's draft research assessment system requires research to be deposited in institutional repositories 

• The Wellcome Trust is auditing the level of compliance with its open access mandate and plans to contact non-complying grantees individually.

• UK Research Councils

• Open access publishing: Publisher makes full text version of article immediately freely available online.

• Self archiving: Author posts “author-copy” on open access websites or any other open access repository

Achieving Open Access

Why you may need a repository

• To comply with funding agencies

• To raise profile of scholarly research and maximize global visibility for your institution

• Maximize the dissemination of research and to collect content in a single location

• To store and preserve other institutional digital assets, including unpublished or otherwise easily lost ("grey") literature (e.g., theses or technical reports)

How are Institutional Repositories used?

• Scholarly communication

• Storing learning materials and courseware

• Managing collections of research documents

• Preserving digital materials for the long term

• Knowledge management

• Electronic publishing

• Research assessment exercise

• Collaboration tool

Benefits of digital repositories

• Provides high visibility to research

• Allows institution to publicize a wide range of content    • Increased exposure - repositories make research easily available

• Universal access through search engines

• Long term preservation

• Persistent access

• Copyright monitoring

Benefits of setting up an institutional repository

For researchers

• Showcase your research• Increases citation potential• 24 hour access through any web-enabled device• Life’s work in one location• Satisfy funders' mandates

For librarians

• Provides new ways for archiving & preserving valuable work• Time-saving and cost-effective• Help to identify trends • Reduce duplication of records

More Benefits

For the university

• An institutional repository is an effective marketing tool• Increase the visibility, reputation and prestige• Greater interdisciplinary research• Enhanced funding• Easier reporting for RAE/REF

For the global community

• Free access of scholarly information• Taxpayers fund a large amount of scientific research• Developing countries• Increase public knowledge• Gain access to a wide variety of materials

What type of content can be deposited in a

institutional repository? Faculty

• Pre-prints, Post-prints, research findings, working papers, technical reports, conference papers

• Multimedia, videos, teaching materials, learning objects

• Data sets (scientific, demographic, etc.) and other ancillary research material

• Web-based presentations, exhibits, etc.

Students

• Theses and dissertations• Projects and portfolios• Awarded research• Performances and recitals

In-house solution = Hidden Costs

Front End

Server

File storage

IT personnel

Back ups

Upgrades

Obstacles to building a repository in-house

• Open source institutional repository software is free to acquire but expensive to implement

• Delays due to slow response from over-burdened IT services

• Lack of personnel with the correct skills

• Projects often go on for much longer than necessary

• Other priorities can crop up unexpectedly and divert resources away from the repository project

Hosted solution = Transparent Costs

Try before you buy

Rapid set up

Seamless upgrades

Predictable/lower costs

Technical support

Why do we offer Open Repository?

• To allow any institution or organisation to benefit from open access

• To offer a cost effective means of developing a repository

• Not everybody has the technology, resources or skills to build a repository in-house

• We have a commitment to open access, demonstrated by our commitment to DSpace. Our technical architect is a DSpace committer and our publisher is on the DSpace foundation

Why DSpace?

• Widely used across the world

• Vibrant open source development community

• Java-based, fits with BioMed Central’s existing development skills

• Easy migration of repositories

• Logical and flexible infrastructure, suitable to a wide range of institutions, using a hierarchy of communities and collections.

What is Open Repository?

• Open Repository is a hosted solution for building and maintaining a customized DSpace repository to suit a university or organisation’s requirements

•A service to enable institutions to collect, showcase and preserve scholarly output for future generations

•Can be used to store a variety of document types and be used for internal material as well as publicly available documents

• A service from BioMed Central, the open access specialists, enabling institutions to set up a fully functioning repository quickly and efficiently

How do Open Repository customers benefit?

• We have a better insight into hosting repositories– We are the open access publisher.

• Wealth of experience gained from different sectors– academic, research, teaching, charity, government, museums, etc.

• We can help grow content quickly– tools assist rapid and extensive population (datafeeds, batch-

uploads, etc)

• We share ideas to foster success– we learn from each of our clients experiences and share them in

the community

Who Already Uses Open Repository?

• University/Higher Education

Research Institutes

• General Teaching Council of Northern Ireland (K-12)

• Museums

• International Charity/Humanitarian Aid Organisation

• National Health Service (Government)

• University Hospital

Case Study – “Médecins sans Frontières” or “Doctors without Borders”

• Needed a reliable, high quality platform with a proven track-record

• Wanted a central place for all published articles to be gathered

• Needed material to be accessible in the 3rd world

• Had very specific development requirements, customizable browse functionality

• Our knowledge as a medical publisher was particularly useful here

Case Study – “Médecins sans Frontières”

• Chose Open Repository due to open access credentials

• Perfect platform to allow access in developing countries

• Advanced customizations to the user-interface

• Changed the names of communities and collections to sections and topics, which made the content more relevant for their users

• Médecins sans Frontières received 100 more hits per months due to Open Repository

Case Study - Roehampton University UK

• Prestigious University

• Wanted to use an open-source software

• Required a flexible, easy solution to be outsourced

• Were concerned about a way to easily gather content from their academics to populate the repository

Case Study - Roehampton University

• Switched to Open Repository because it uses open-source DSpace software – gives them security for the future

• Open Repository handled all technical aspects, allowing library resources to concentrate on gathering material to populate the repository

• Open Repository further assisted by carrying out some batch uploads at no extra cost in order to further boost the content

What can we offer you?

• Rapid set up, hosting & maintenance

• Customization and branding to match your requirements

• Acceptance of a wide variety of publication types & multimedia files

• Powerful browse and search functionality (full text)

• Administrator tools with granular access controls & submission workflow tools

• Seemless upgrades

• Full training for users and administrators

• Customer and technical support

Some of the Unique Features of Open Repository

• Advanced document upload functionality

* pre-filled submission forms (using DOI or PMID)

* ability to upload multiple files at the same time

• Conversion to PDF and Open Office formats

• Data feeds from PubMed Central and other open access archives

• Social bookmarking tags (Digg, facebook, cite-u-like etc)

• Embargo tool

• E-Theses submission form

New developments of Open Repository

• Improved scalability and extensibility of the software

• Further customization of the interface and workflow engine to better suit your institutions needs

• Ability to handle more complex objects with ease, such as websites, multiple versions of documents

• Integration and support for “SWORD”, that allows the integration with other systems.

• Integration with e-learning platforms such as Sakai, Moodle and Blackboard

• Integrate other publishing systems such as Open Journal System (OJS)

New developments of Open Repository

• Improved Researcher Pages - BibApp Campus Research Gateway thatenable researchers to store their life’s work within one central location and enables user to locate it through the search function.

• OpenSearch - OpenSearch is a collection of simple formats for the sharing of search results.

• OpenURL - A system with the OpenURL resolver is able to search other systems which have OpenURL (linking installed) to see whether they have a copy of an article they wish to purchase.

What our customers have said about us…

“Open Repository provides a hosted solution that is quick and simple to set up, customizable to our needs and easy to use”

Pat Simons, Bibliographic and Technical Services Manager, Roehampton University

“A very slick service (and product!).” Martin Myhill, Acting University library, University of Exeter

"Open Repository is easy to deal with, quick and useful: Our main requirements for a institutional repository have now been

fulfilled"Sigrun Espelien Aasen

Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services/ Norwegian electronic health library

Thank you for your time!

Claire.bundy@biomedcentral.com+44 203 192 2218

The institutional repository service from BioMed Central