Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Facilitating access and dissemination of research: role of

the university libraryRobin Adams

Irish Universities Association Librarians’ Group

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Traditional research role of the academic library

• Acquisition

• Organisation

• Dissemination

• Preservation

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Contemporary research role of the academic Library

• Acquire, organise, access, preserve +

• Enhance access and use

• Add value

• Create and remodel research resources

• Links disparate resources

• Evaluate

• Engage in the discovery process

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL e-journals initiative - background

• Emerging economic role of scientific research

• User pressure on university/research funding agencies

• Subscription price inflation• Value for money• International exemplars (FINeLIB,

Canada, JISC)• Technological progress

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL – summary of service

• Consortial purchasing scheme for 7 universities• Access to (1) STM and (2) A&H material• Supported by State agencies –

research/education (Science Foundation Ireland/Higher Education Authority)

• Supplementary funding • 3,000+ e-titles• Centrally negotiated• Centrally administered

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL timescale

• May 2004 – invited proposal• Science Foundation Ireland and Higher

Education Authority decisions• €20M over 5 years• Universities, initially• Phase I live by December 2004• Now 6,000 STM titles – • 2006 extended to HSS• €17m funding• Now 18,000 HSS titles

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL Impact Survey

• 55% no longer use print versions of IReL titles (63% STM, 34% HSS)

• ‘very positive’ impact – speed, coverage, ease of access, greater competitiveness, multidisciplinary research, currency

• Use – literature searching, identifying publication target, current awareness, thesis, research proposal, teaching, supervision, impact assessment, cv prep

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL Architecture

• Publisher package model

• IUA Librarians’ Group oversight

• Negotiating agent – Content Complete Ltd.

• IRIS Ltd. as the managing agent

• Direct consultation with users

• IReL Model Licence

• 2-3 year licences

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL - deliverables

• Powerful resource for research, teaching, learning

• Attract high-flyers• Promotes local academic and national socio-

economic objectives • Establishes top-slicing model• Positive user impact: affirms role of the library

and sharpens image• Reduces physical processing• Prompts joint print rationalisation

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL - challenges

• Relies on external funding• Ties up local funds• Reduces flexibility• Reduced meta-searchability• Obscures the role of the library? • Eclipses print information needs• Reinforces the commercial publishing model• Conflicts with Open Access philosophy?

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL Open Initiative

• “Governments should increase access to findings from publicly funded research to maximise social returns on public investments”(OECD)[1]

• “Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research [should be] made available and accessible for public use, interrogation, and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable. ” (Research Councils UK)[2]

•[1] http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/12/35393145.pdf

• [2] RCUK position statement on access to research outputs. http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/statement.pdf

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

National environment

• HEA funded under Strategic Innovation Fund

• National Development Plan

• Research as critical to economic development

• National research profile

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Institutional environment

• Research as strategic to university planning

• Institutional research profiles

• Citation impact enhancement

• Research partnerships

• HEA Matching Funding

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Objectives

• Enhance the profile of Irish research

• Maximise the impact of Irish research

• Make research data available to Irish researchers

• Increase accountability of Irish universities

• Make publicly-funded research available publicly

• Provide means of archiving results

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Objectives 2

• Provide free-to-user access to research results

• Add value to other components of the national information infrastructure – Expertiseireland, IReL

• Scalability

• Development

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

National portal

• Hosted by ExpertiseIreland

• Single point of access to national research output

• Harvested from University Research Repositories

• Includes published research across all disciplines

• Data sets

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

National portal

• Value added service– Preservation of electronic resources– Metadata standards– Maintenance standards– Enrichment of content

• Links to Research Support Systems• Enhanced searching through full-text access• Analysis of content/use/• Identification of research trends

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

IReL-Open, Status

• Formal Opening April 2007

• IUA IR Working Group

• IReL-Open

• Metadata and Harvesting

• Standard Licenses

• Local Implementation

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Some repository sites

• JISC United Kingdom– http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_digital

_repositories.aspx

• CARL, Canada– http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/institutional_repositories/

member_resources-e.html

• DAREnet,Netherlands– http://www.darenet.nl/en/page/language.view/search.page

• Natl Inst Informatics, Japan– http://www.nii.ac.jp/irp/index-e.html

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Open Access Factors

• Digital publishing technologies and networking drives demand for broader access to research and for more robust digital presentation.

• Increases in volume of research, especially in sciences, strains the print publishing model and exacerbates user dissatisfaction with the latency in print.

• Dissatisfaction with traditional print and electronic journal price and market models - become less relevant and more difficult to sustain with rapidly escalating prices and relatively flat library budgets.

• Uncertainty over the preservation & archiving of digital scholarly research material.

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Open Access and Subscription Model

• Research funders mandates– NIH OA mandate, requires researchers to deposit final papers

funded by NIH in PubMed Central repository – OA Mandates – UK Research Councils, Agence nationale de la

recherche, Canadian Inst Health, EU FP7, IRCSET, JISC, Research Foundation Flanders (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek), Swiss National Science Foundation

• 65 journals converted from TA to OA in 2007

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Open Access journals

• 65 journals converted from Toll Acess to OA in 2007• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) reports 2,555

titles (+20% 2007) • OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories),

reports 1,017 repositories ( + 22% 2007) • Number of records on deposit grew by 4,560,809, or

46%. • On the journal side, the Directory of Open Access

Journals reached the milestone of 3,000 titles, and SHERPA's RoMEO database documented more than 300 publisher policies on self-archiving..

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Journal Impact Factor

Robin Adams, IUA Librarians, 100108

Open Access v. Subscription Access

• OA Repositories provide a central component in reforming scholarly

communication by stimulating innovation in a disaggregated publishing structure

• serve as tangible indicators of an institution’s quality, thus increasing its visibility, prestige, and public value.

• AAP - OA“undermines publishers' ability to exercise their copyrights in the published articles…threatens the intellectual freedom of authors, including their choice to seek publication in journals that may refuse to accept proposed articles that would be subject to the

new mandate"