Convincing the Institution: Developing an Institutional Open Archive of Research Publications at the University of Edinburgh Morag Watson & Avril Conacher Science & Engineering Library, Learning & Information Centre (SELLIC) Project University of Edinburgh Scotland, UK

University of Edinburgh

Large, ancient research-led university 22,000 students 1,500 research-active staff 3,750 research outputs per year 4 Faculty Groups –Arts/Music/Humanities –Law/Social Sciences/Education –Medicine/Veterinary Medicine –Science & Engineering

Infrastructure Solaris Apache Perl MySQL Perl Modules

Installation Issues Existing Infrastructure –Solaris –Apache –Perl Added for Eprints –MySQL –relevant Perl Modules

Installation Issues Using Solaris Technical knowledge required –apache, Perl, databases Server running other services –commercial software evaluations Server running other development projects –other open source applications

Installation Issues Initial Installation Summer 2001 –didn’t work –technical support from Southampton Reinstalled November 2001 –less complex technical environment –does work Currently : begun to think about installation of version 2.0

Current Status Pilot available to Library Staff Metadata requirement under consideration Searching requirements under consideration Loaded c. 60 papers to assist with evaluation of requirements

Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) One institutional Open research archive sustained by self-archiving OAI makes an alternative to commercial publishing possible Library journal expenditure £1.8m per annum Savings to library

Content and customisation Depositing published research papers from Departments including Physics & Astronomy and Informatics All publications : conference, research papers and reports Development and customisation of interface for ease of submission begun

First steps to implementation Summer 2001 : approached academic departments with Eprints idea Response from them was mixed Spring (?) 2002 : Attitudes have changed slightly and researchers are more enthusiastic

First steps to implementation Library trying to participate in more inter- departmental projects and activities Library collaborating with development of VLE’s and courseware Have adopted a “Top down” approach at EU And “Bottom up” And occasionally sideways!

Why was there resistance at first? Library savings have only an indirect benefit to many of them Academic concerns Disciplines without preprint exchange cultures take more persuading (There was some confusion about eprints and preprints)

Why the library? 1Trusted administrator of scholarly resources 2Can run the machinery of self-archiving 3Has the tools and skills to do metadata and preservation 4Will apply metadata standards uniformly

Why the library? 5Can monitor use of commercial journals and make savings 6Resolver services will empower librarians to choose the free research corpus 7Can deliver the new system near- seamlessly 8Has experience of copyright negotiation

Strategy 1Convince senior managers (Chair of Research Committee, Director of Planning, Director of Research Development, Vice- Principal Information Strategy etc) 2Meet the researchers in their departments 3Link to RAE (Research Assessment Ex.) 4Promote institutional research profile

Strategy 5Respect disciplinary heterogeneity 6Do not make sweeping assumptions 7Free the time of academics to do more research 8Emphasise conservatism (no threat to existing publishing practices) 9Cancel subscriptions gradually and only on basis of strong evidence 10Link to researcher database

Strategy 11View preprints as a bonus 12Respect the top journals 13Build on existing support for RAE submission administration (‘fresh in their minds’) 14Disciplinary vs institutional archives: not mutually exclusive

Strategy 15Include researchers from disciplines without existing archives 16Make allies of academics on editorial boards of commercial journals 17 Begin with a demonstrator 18Attract additional internal and external funding

Copyright Copyright belongs to University Researchers and authors should assert their right to their intellectual property University will perhaps assert its copyright over material Threat from commercial vendors, for example “electronic courseware”

The IPR scale of assertiveness ‘I retain only the right to distribute it for free for scholarly/scientific purposes …’ ‘The University of Edinburgh is authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon.’ ‘This licence entitles the publisher to publish the article only in a single issue of The Journal of …’

Thank You &