1. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Introduction to Iowa Research Online (IRO) Wendy Robertson The University of Iowa Libraries
The University Libraries has long provided permanent access to scholarly publications, accessible to anyone who comes in our doors.

2. Digital Library Services
As part of that ongoing mission, Digital Library Services facilitates the creation, use, and preservation of open access digital content by offering a wide array of resources and services in support of teaching, learning, research and creative endeavors. We work with faculty, academic departments, centers and institutes. Most of our projects are meant to be openly accessible and retained permanently.
We think of our services as being of 3 broad types.
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3. Department Collections
One branch deals primarily with visual and historical materials—images, video, etc. The Iowa Digital Library includes collections from departments, such as the UIMA collection,
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4. Faculty Image Collection
or from faculty researchers, such as this image collection of anthropological fieldwork.
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5. Collaborative Projects
It also includes collaborations among multiple departments, such as the Iowa City Flood collection with pictures from University News Services, Story Corps interviews and oral histories recorded by the Anthropology Department.
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6. Iowa Research Online http://ir.uiowa.edu/
Another branch of our services is Iowa Research Online, which primarily includes textual and current scholarship. I will come back to this shortly.
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7. e-Research Projects http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/dls/projects.html
The third branch of our services is to support faculty creation of specialized research projects, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. Later this week, we will be announcing support for two digital humanities projects funded in part by Libraries innovation funds.
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8. Iowa Research Online http://ir.uiowa.edu/
Iowa Research Online includes research and scholarly output of the faculty, researchers and students of the University of Iowa. It is meant for permanent, final content, not for collaborative development of research. The long term nature of the collection means the URLs are stable. The content, with a few exceptions, is open to everyone in the world.
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9. Open Metadata http://ir.uiowa.edu/wwqr/vol27/iss3/
In the few cases where the content is not accessible to everyone, the metadata is still fully searchable in search engines. This example also shows the content is indexed by Google with high ranking.
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10. Hosted Software http://www.bepress.com/ir/
IRO uses hosted software from the company bepress, called Digital Commons. The software as a service model works well for us; we can focus on providing access to the content without needing the infrastructure to support the hardware.
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11. Subsets of Content http://ir.uiowa.edu/communities.html
Content is put into separate subsets by academic discipline, allowing more finely tuned authorizations and customizations.
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12. Peer-Reviewed Scholarship
It includes peer reviewed scholarship of faculty and graduate students when allowed by copyright. Note that each collection also has an RSS feed.
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13. Download Content http://ir.uiowa.edu/tl_pubs/1/
Files need to be downloaded, giving a practical file size limit, and means IRO is not the solution for large data sets.
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14. Embargoed Content http://ir.uiowa.edu/delta_center_pubs/1/
In some cases, publishers require several month embargoes for content. We can add these materials right away with an embargo date and then the article will become accessible automatically after the date has passed.
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15. Variety of Formats http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/189/
Word documents are automatically converted to PDFs upon upload. Other formats can also be posted, such as PowerPoint, audio or video files or zipped folders.
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16. Link to Streaming http://ir.uiowa.edu/lib_workshops/2/
Audio and video can also be linked to a streaming server.
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17. Working Papers http://ir.uiowa.edu/polisci_pubs/6/
In addition to peer reviewed scholarship, IRO includes working papers, technical reports,
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18. Conference Papers http://ir.uiowa.edu/polisci_pubs/9/
conference papers, presentations and
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19. Scholarly Editions http://ir.uiowa.edu/history_pubs/1/
scholarly editions of out of copyright material.
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20. Center’s Publications
We are also working with the Public Policy Center to put their content in IRO. The repository pulls together all this hard to find grey literature into a central, well indexed, stable place, off of individual faculty web pages.
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21. Supplementary Materials
Materials that supplement published articles can be included with an article or independently.
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22. Supplementing Separate Article
This is particularly useful for software, tools and models.
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23. Copyright Information
We ask submitters to include copyright information for each item, although we also provide copyright clearance assistance. They can choose a creative commons license if they wish.
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24. Book Series http://ir.uiowa.edu/uipress_ipp/
The repository includes some older book series published by UIPress, with freely available full text in PDF format.
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25. Theses and Dissertations
One of the major collections in IRO is our Theses and Dissertations. Starting in Dec 2009, almost all theses and dissertations are submitted electronically. They all go into IRO.
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26. Popular Items Highlighted
Our most used thesis has been downloaded 1000 times in less than a year, far more use than our print theses. The popular paper link is available by collection or for all of IRO.
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27. Individual Faculty Collections
IRO also includes collections related to individual faculty. We have Marshall Poe's New Books in History podcasts archived in IRO. We also have Bob Boynton's work studying the use of Twitter to exchange political information.
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28. Submitting Research
To submit content, you sign in using an address as the user name. We are working towards using hawkids and hope this will be in place in the next year.
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29. Submitting Research Form
You then agree to basic terms, fill out a simple form and upload your content. An administrator approves submitted content. Library staff can post content or will train departments to maintain their own collections. This distributed model gives units complete control over adding content to the repository.
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30. Usage Statistics
Individuals receive monthly usage reports which give their total full text downloads. Administrators get complete reports for their collections. Additional reports are available through Google analytics.
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31. Peer Review Software http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/
Iowa Research Online includes peer review software for individual series. This is particularly useful for our hosted journals. Authors submit articles and then editors assign them to reviewers. Reminders are automatically sent, reducing the administrative work of managing a journal title. Articles can be published right away or collected into an issue.
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32. Conferences http://ir.uiowa.edu/icru/
Conferences can also use the review process for submissions and to publish the schedule and presentations. ICRU is using IRO for their research poster festivals. The conference sites and journals can be customized so that they have an independent look or blend with related websites.
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33. Access Controls http://ir.uiowa.edu/wwqr/
Two of our peer reviewed journals have current issues restricted to subscribers. Subscription controls can be by IP range (for institutions) or address (for individual subscribers). The software does not include a mechanism for handling payments.
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34. Individual Pages http://works.bepress.com/kelly_kadera/
Link to External Site
Individuals can create their own pages, pulling in content from IRO using another bepress product called SelectedWorks. Additional citations can be added for material not in IRO, with an automatic link to the article’s full text.
PDF from IRO
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35. Department Gallery http://ir.uiowa.edu/polisci/sw_gallery.html
These pages can be pulled together for a department, creating a unified place for their scholarship and to increase the department’s profile.
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36. Metadata Accessible
The metadata can be accessed and repurposed in other ways. The software uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting and can accessed with standard http requests.
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37. For More Information
Wendy Robertson Digital Library Services
If you are interested in learning more about IRO, please contact the libraries.
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