From “IR” to: Scholarly Communication Services

COLD Collection Development Group

Dave Stout Director, Sales

The Berkeley Electronic Pressdstout@bepress.com

The Berkeley Electronic Press

Mission: • The Berkeley Electronic Press

("bepress") produces tools to improve scholarly communication. These tools provide innovative and effective means of content production, management, and dissemination.

About The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress)

• Founders:

Aaron Edlin

Robert Cooter

COLD Questions:

What is an IR?

What Purpose does it serve?

A definition of “IR”

“…a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution." (Lynch, 2003)

An “IR” is not:

• a true preservation system– though may exhibit some characteristics of

a TDR

• An enterprise-level “records management” system– Open vs. closed

Most common “IR” options:

Open Source:DSpaceePrintsFedora

Commercial:Digital CommonsOpenRepository

Most common “IR” options:

Open Source:• Install locally (usually)

• Institution responsible for all aspects of software/hardware maintenance, including programming efforts to customize

• No license cost

• High human costs

Most common “IR” options:

Commercial, Hosted systems:• Service model, including hosting of

application and data

• Upgrades and new capabilites provided by the service provider

• License/subscription costs

• Low human/staffing costs

About Digital Commons (bepress)

• Bepress has two primary activities:– Scholarly journal publishing “Guest Access”

business model– Software developed to promote scholarly

communications

• Developed “repository” platform with CDL as development partner– Launched in 2002

About Digital Commons

• Exclusive license with ProQuest to sell the bepress “IR” (Digital Commons) from June 2003-June 2007

• Sales agreement with PQ was terminated, and bepress began growing…and this is good!

• Currently ~75 customers using the bepress Digital Commons platform

• Company deeply committed to the long term success of its customers’ repositories

YESTERDAY:“Institutional Repositories”…

• How to promote cooperation from potential “depositors” (faculty) on campus?

COLD Question:COLD Question:

Why do university IRs struggle for content?

1. Poorly framed message– “Duty”, “Archiving”, “Preservation”, “IR”, “Pilot”– Visually unappealing, database results

2. Ineffective delivery of the message – Focused inward on policies and technologies– When looking outward, too reliant on “awareness”

3. Narrowly defined scope of content– Overvalue preprints and post prints– Too much of the library’s stuff

Faculty members don’t contribute

37% of content in IRs is faculty scholarship. The number looks okay, but…

Only 14% of content in IRs is faculty scholarship when the top 5 IRs are removed.

Source of figures: Survey results of 68 IRs. Cat S. McDowell. “Evaluating Institutional Repository Deployment in American Academe Since Early 2005”, D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2007. Volume 13 Number 9/10. www.dlib.org/dlib/september07/mcdowell/09mcdowell.html

“Positioning” the IR is problematic

• 0% of faculty surveyed understood the term “Institutional Repository” and perceived its benefit (1).

• Librarians believe that long-term accessibility is their strongest argument for encouraging faculty participation at 60% (2).

• However, in a study of faculty, only 25% of faculty understood “Digital Preservation” and perceived its benefit (1).

1) Source of figures: Survey results of 30 faculty at the University of Rochester. Susan Gibbons. “Making the Repository a Success with Your Academic Staff.” June 29, 2006, page 20. www.apsr.edu.au/successful/gibbons1.ppt

2) Survey results of content recruitment leaders from 54 institutions with IRs. John Potter. “Emerging Content October Recruitment Patterns among Institutional Repositories.” 2006, Page 5 ”

IR technology isn’t turnkey• Initial effort is focused on the technology

– Servers, storage, infrastructure– IT resources: staffing, training, experimentation

• Implementation is focused on the platform rather than the content--PROGRAMMING

• Result: a technology-first orientation forms around the IR platform. Sometimes the library loses control, or worse the faculty needs aren’t considered.

• Energy and momentum gets lost.

Most IR platforms are not user-centered

• Most IR platforms do not come out-of-the-box with faculty participation in mind – Does it help a faculty member communicate with

colleagues? – Does the user interface look nice and is it intuitive to

use?– Does it present the scholar’s research attractively?– Does the faculty member own the page? Can he/she

control how work is presented?– Is it easy to upload content and make other changes? – Is there some sort of feedback loop to encourage a

faculty member to return and upload more research

Most IR platforms are not user-centered

“It’s really hard to put yourself in the mindset of “the user” when you’re trying to put a piece of software together.”

“We have not been designing repositories for a typical, representative faculty member.”

Dorothea Salo, Caveat Lector, 1/25/2008http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2008/01/25/

the-point-of-personae/

TODAY:“Research Showcase” and services

A definition of “IR”

“…a (university-based) institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution." (Lynch, 2003)

• What do successful IRs have in common?

• What constitutes success?

Questions:Questions:

What do successful IRs have in common?

1. Reframe the message: engage scholars– Names like “Top Scholar”, “ScholarWorks”, “Cream of Science” – Publishing services, rewards, feedback loop – Research Showcase, including at the individual level

2. Deliver the message: face-to-face– Librarian as evangelist and facilitator– Peer-to-peer

3. Widen the scope: include original content – Journals, conferences, dissertations, thesis, undergraduate works,

speeches, sessions, lectures, presentations, and other events

What constitutes success?

•  Common measures– % Penetration/ % adoption– Total number of documents– Readership (downloads)– Site hits, page hits, or referrals

• Refined measures– Number of docs > 10 downloads per month– Rate of growth

– Number of docs / type of content • Other measures

– Step forward toward reforming scholarly communications

– Improved brand / raised prestige

• Should each university have their own?– YES!

Administrators are concerned with capturing scholarly output, along with branding that output (marketing) for the institution

COLD Question:COLD Question:

• What advantages/disadvantages are there for a library in managing an IR?– In line with mission of stewards of

“content”– A new service where one didn’t exist

before, important to individual faculty

• Should libraries be proactive or reactive regarding the idea of an IR?

COLD Questions:COLD Questions:

• What legal considerations come with an IR?

• intellectual property,

• copyright,

• etc…

COLD Questions:COLD Questions:

Valued Services: Scholarly Communication and

Publishing

Selected Works:Focus on recruitment

• Integrate Faculty members personal web page into the “showcase”, for describing themselves and their work– That content is fed into the repository– Gives the faculty member ownership– Add an element of “enlightened self-interest” to

participating in the research showcase

Selected Works:

I am a recent user of the "selected works" product you license to the

University of Pennsylvania.  I'm already a huge fan.  This will greatly

facilitate the sharing of my research with colleagues and interested

folks…. I love the product.

I am a recent user of the "selected works" product you license to the

University of Pennsylvania.  I'm already a huge fan.  This will greatly

facilitate the sharing of my research with colleagues and interested

folks…. I love the product.

Creating Scholarship in IR’s…really?

YES! Last month alone, schools using Digital Commons began seven new journals and other peer-reviewed series:

• Frontiers in Entrepreneurship Research – Babson College • Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology – UC Merced • Journal of California Anthropology – UC Merced • Journal of Transnational American Studies – UC Santa Barbara• World Cultures eJournal – University of California Irvine • Music Education Symposia – UMass Amherst • Landscapes of Violence – UMass Amherst

http://digitalcommons.bepress.com/http://digitalcommons.bepress.com/

Question: Why such uptake?

Answer: Publishing within Digital Commons fills a vacuum in scholarly communication

• Launch new online peer-review journals

• Manage conferences & workshops

• Review and track grant proposals

• Review and publish student research

• Support small societies and associations

Schools are using their Digital Commons to:

Examples of publishing• Regional or local journals:

• California Agriculture (UC Davis)http://repositories.cdlib.org/anrcs/californiaagriculture/

San Francisco Estuary (UC Davis)http://repositories.cdlib.org/jmie/sfews/

• Newsletters & Bulletins• Center Pieces (Thomas Jefferson)

http://jdc.jefferson.edu/centerpieces/

• Health Policy Newlsetter (Thomas Jefferson)http://jdc.jefferson.edu/hpn/

• Culture Mandela (Bond Univ)http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cm/

Examples of publishing• Emerging or test journals:

• Cities and the Environment (Boston College)http://escholarship.bc.edu/cate/

• Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment (BC)http://escholarship.bc.edu/jtla/

• University Press open access journals• CLCWeb (Purdue Univ)

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol10/iss1/

• Book reviews for subject areas or types of audiences

• First Opinions (Purdue)http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/fosr/

Examples of publishing

• Scholarly niche or speciality journals:• The Russell journal (McMaster Univ)

http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/

• Student-run journals• Res Publica (Illinois Wesleyan Univ)

http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/respublica/

• CUREJ: College of Undergraduate Research Journalhttp://repository.upenn.edu/curej/

• Conferences, proceedings & workshopsLots of examples, and many projects underway

Making publishing a reality: what the IR needs

• Peer-review workflow capabilities (open, blind, or double-blind)

• Supporting the spectrum of access control: from open access to subscription control

• A commitment to user-centered design• Streamlined, unobtrusive workflows for

contributors and editors alike

Why is this so exciting?

• Engages faculty members on their terms• Fills the repository with high-value content• Turns the IR into live, creative, collaborative place• Enables the library to take the lead in the

development of the university as publisher • Provides a highly-visible publishing platform for

ideas and research that could otherwise never be discovered

From the field:

“One of the great surprises in managing the infant but growing IR at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln has been the overwhelming popularity of a number of works that had been or logically would be deemed unsuitable for ordinary (i.e. paper) publication.”

Paul Royster, "Publishing Original Content in an

Institutional Repository" Serials Review (2007).

Why such uptake? Continued…

“While such content makes up only a tiny percentage of the repository’s content, its usage is far out of proportion to that of the usual and ‘koshered’ or peer-reviewed articles the IR was designed to archive, preserve, and render accessible.”

Paul Royster, "Publishing Original Content in an

Institutional Repository" Serials Review (2007).

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’sDictionary of Invertebrate Zoology

• Compiled over a 15-year period by the lab director• Submitted, accepted, peer reviewed • Scheduled for publication by a university press• Suddenly cancelled, no other “takers”

• IR manager asked to be given a shot at publishing it• Downloaded nearly 1,200 times in the first month online• Continues at nearly 1000 downloads per month• To date: nearly 30,000 downloads!!!

A valuable reference asset—Almost published:

Same asset—published via the IR:

Online Dictionary of Invertebrate Zoology

Dictionary of Invertebrate Zoology

Publishing within the IR fills a vacuum in scholarly communication

“This suggests a role for the IRs beyond that of archival storage and accessibility enhancement: in fact, they are well-suited to become online publishers giving voice to a wide range of authors normally excluded, put off, or ill-served by the vagaries, idiosyncrasies, delays, obligations, and hoops-jumping of the conventional publication routes.”

Paul Royster, "Publishing Original Content in an

Institutional Repository" Serials Review (2007).

Thank you

Dave Stout, bepress Services

dstout@bepress.com