Merit JISC Collections Merit: presentation for UKCORR Hugh Look, Project Director

Merit JISC Collections Why am I here, giving this talk? I want to introduce you to Merit I want to hear what you think about it I want to ask you for ideas I want to ask you for help

Merit JISC Collections Overview of project Making Excellent Research Influential and Transferable A JISC Collections initiative Main objectives –To provide access for everyone to the outputs of the best UK research –To create a partnership between everyone involved in the scholarly publishing process –To offer a guide to the best UK research and researchers, to assist raising their profiles and providing users with a route to identify them –To make the service visible through Google and other standard internet search engines Is not another evaluation/assessment exercise –JISC Collections should not evaluate Launch collection: all outputs from RAE2008 Access for all users –International as well as UK Ideally, to publishers’ version

Merit JISC Collections Merit’s value Making important and trusted research outputs universally available –Showcase for research teams –Showcase for institutions –Showcase for UK research excellence –Route for user to identify research and researchers of known quality Constrains field for non-expert to navigate through HEFCE has published metadata for outputs, but not in easily searchable form Anticipated audience mainly: –UK agencies (Regional Development Agencies, government departments etc) –Large UK enterprises –Non-UK researchers –Non-UK enterprises –Individual citizens Collaborations and partnerships are important to researchers, to the community and to business

Merit JISC Collections Some numbers Caveat: the dataset we are using has not be fully deduped and we are missing some data for some outputs Nearly 212,000 outputs 159,000 journal articles Nearly 80% of the journal outputs in the collection were published by four publishers Classic “long tail” model

Merit JISC Collections Type of output

Merit JISC Collections The long tail: distribution between HEIs RAE2008: outputs submitted by HEI

Merit JISC Collections The long tail: volume of content by publisher

Merit JISC Collections Metadata for each output HEI name Name of person submitting Unit of assessment Title Up to 3 other authors Publication details (journal, date, page range) Publisher Publisher’s homepage URL ISSN DOI Some things we don’t have – address for person submitting –Department for person submitting

Merit JISC Collections How we hope to do it Launch selection of outputs provided to HEFCE for RAE2008 –Selection was in the hands of HEIs –Peer reviewed journal articles –Will be mainly metadata at launch –Most publishers unwilling to make articles available on open access How to provide access to full articles? –Publishers’ version preferred –Some publishers make articles over a certain age available on open access –Repository versions (author’s final) also very useful Challenges –How to select future outputs (our major challenge) –Need to reach individual agreements with publishers (difficult) –Low proportion of outputs in repositories –Repository managers may not be too happy about trying to increase that number –Must make it work with generic search engines (Google, Yahoo!)

Merit JISC Collections Relationship with publishers What's in it for HEIs –Increased exposure –Traffic –Brand reinforcement –Opportunity to promote expertise and reputation to wider audience –Merit articles labelled to show excellence Possible additional benefits for IRs –Inclusion in Merit might attract academics to deposit full versions (higher profile) –Additional benefit to being in IR is the future –Others? What would be the most important benefit for you?

Merit JISC Collections Selecting future outputs A huge challenge Target: 15,000-20,000 outputs per year No-one agrees how we should do it Should we reflect new measures such as impact? How does Merit fit in with the REF? Must not be done by JISC Peer review essential Models must work well for all disciplines –Or perhaps more than one model Want to include new researchers (post-RAE2008) May well be hybrid, rather than single rule Some possible components of a solution –Metrics: bibliometrics, downloads –Grant funding awarded –Existing contributors have right to add X articles per year –HEIs nominate X articles per year Objective is to reflect wide range of research activity without losing selectivity

Merit JISC Collections Technical architecture Portal to publishers’ servers and repositories Complex, but not rocket science Many examples of similar strategies Importance of presence in search engines Soliciting expressions of interest at the moment

Merit JISC Collections Development plans Strengthen links to researchers as well as research Key projects Researchers’ contributions on the significance of their work Other types of output

Merit JISC Collections So, what next? Consultation with HEIs –IR managers –PVCs for Research Feedback so far –PVCs Showcase is valuable Selectivity important Concern about method of selection (but no strong solution) –IR managers No necessary connection between IR and RAE2008: IRs not always used for RAE if publications database available Some HEIs used repository to hold all publications data IRs do not always flag which content has full text, so each record has to be checked Resource commitment to identify authors & articles is large Better to use Merit as lever for future submission rather than RAE2008 catch-up

Merit JISC Collections Your reactions Enhancing RAE2008 content What we should be doing in the future Does it have value for you? Would you be able/willing to help by stimulating researchers to deposit?

Merit JISC Collections Contact information Hugh Look Project Director Tel: Heather Haskins Project Officer Tel: