WRN-EP Team sign off

This is the last official blog post of the WRN-EP Team with the current project coming to an end on 31 March 2011.

We'd like to say many thanks to our project partners for working with us over the last two years. Also, many thanks to our colleagues within the greater repository community for their input and advice in regard to project activities.

Please visit the Welsh Repository Network community within the Aberystwyth University repository CADAIR to view and download the HowTos, learning objects, presentations and report documentation produced over the course of the WRN-EP.

The WRN will continue beyond the life of the WRN-EP in the form of a WHELF sub-group, with partners meeting on a biannual basis to exchange repository news and ideas.

JISC repository project activity is also continuing within the WRN with the AEIOU Wales Project running until 31 July 2011.

Launch of Theses Collection Wales

On Friday 18th February 2011 the Welsh Repository Network held a launch event for ' Theses Collection Wales'. The collection allows users to view both electronic and paper copies of theses and dissertations from every Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Wales through a dedicated catalogue.

Screen shot of 'Theses Collection Wales'

Held in Y Drwm at the National Library of Wales the launch event was attended by approximately 35 people from around Wales.


The Theses Collection Wales includes approximately 50,000 theses and dissertations which have been presented for postgraduate degrees in Welsh HEIs. The collection comprises theses and dissertations arising from PhD and research Masters degrees, as well as taught Masters dissertations which have a Welsh interest or have gained a distinction.

Participants at the launch

The vast majority of the current collection is in paper format, but electronic deposit is becoming increasingly common. Through the WRN every HEI in Wales has developed an institutional repository to store and provide online access to their research output, including electronic theses and dissertations - more commonly referred to as 'e-theses'. In 2009 the NLW and the WRN began work on the ‘e-theses harvesting service.’ This service enabled the NLW to collect, through harvesting, copies of the full-text e-theses and to provide continued access to them through preservation management.

The project team

Anyone may search Theses Collection Wales but to access the resources within the collection it is necessary to register as a NLW reader. This will enable you to request to view a print copy of a thesis in the Library Reading Rooms or alternatively to view and download an e-thesis within the catalogue.

All of the electronic PhD theses that have been collected by the NLW from participating institutions will be further harvested by the British Library’s EThOS service. EThOS aims to provide access to all theses produced by UK higher education. For more information regarding EThOS visit http://ethos.bl.uk/

The presentations delivered during the event are now available online by following the relevant links below:

A Long and Winding Road: the creation of Theses Collection Wales
Jackie Knowles, Project Manager, Welsh Repository Network


Demonstration of Theses Collection Wales
Siân Thomas, National Library of Wales

The future of repositories
Balviar Notay, Information Environment Programme Manager, JISC


EThOS Update
Vicky Roy & Andy Appleyard, British Library

RSP e-theses briefing papers

The RSP have made a number of reports and briefing papers authored by UCL, regarding e-theses concerns available on their website: http://www.rsp.ac.uk/help/publications/#briefing-papers (they can be found near the end of the page). The papers cover:

Influencing the Deposit of Electronic Theses in UK HE. Report on a sector-wide survey into thesis deposit and open access
Influencing the Deposit of Electronic Theses in UK HE, Appendix. Full text responses from a sector-wide survey into thesis deposit and open access
Vision, Impact, Success: mandating electronic theses. Case studies of e-theses mandates in practice in the UK Higher Education sector.
Third party copyright
Impact on future publication
Managing embargos
Plagiarism
Policies and guidelines available on the internet
Sensitive content
Workflow analysis

E-thesis & Dissertation Bibliography

Digital Scholarship have released version 5 of their E-thesis and Dissertation Bibliography.

'This selective bibliography includes articles, books, conference papers, technical reports, unpublished e-prints and other scholarly textual resources that are useful in understanding e-theses and dissertations.'

Digital Scholarship have also collated bibliographies relating to:

Institutional Repositories
Digital Curation and Preservation
Open Access Journals
Scholarly Electronic Publishing

OA Week Competition winner: Misha Jepson, Glyndŵr University

We are pleased to announce Misha from Glyndŵr University as our OA Competition winner!!

Misha’s engagement story described the use of advocacy to both gain the attention of an institution’s senior management team and to effectively put across the benefits of a repository to an institution. The story showed the importance of the ‘Elevator Pitch’ advocacy technique in grabbing opportunities where you can to get your case heard. It also showed how aligning the use of the repository with the institution’s strategic aims can embed the system within an institution’s structure.

A copy of Misha's winning story is available here.

RAE data available for download: JISC MERIT project

A new resource which may be of interest to those who are looking to use their institutions’ RAE data to populate their repository and/ or other publication management systems.

The JISC MERIT project has just launched its RAE submissions database which contains data on every UK institutions’ RAE submission.

The database offers faceted searching on the citation data held by: institution; Unit of Assessment; output type; author. The results of any combination of these searches can then be exported and saved to Excel files.

From what I can see the database only holds citation data. It does not seem to offer full-text, links out and/or DOI look ups.

Open Access Week Competition

The week of Monday 18th - Sunday 24th October has been allocated as Open Access Week across the globe. Now in its 4th year, this dedicated week aims to promote 'Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research'.

To mark the occasion we at the WRN are running a competition for partners with an Open Access theme. We are looking for your best repository success story. Whether it's a story of success convincing an academic researcher to interact with the repository, or a tale of success regarding a deposited item that ended up proving the wide-reaching audience of the repository.

Entries can be as long or as short as you want and we are looking to put the best stories together in a blog post and perhaps even in a new advocacy learning object!

The competition is open from now until the Friday before Open Access Week (15th October). There will be a prize available for the winning entry.

Good luck!

Learn about other Open Access Week events, contests and resources through http://www.openaccessweek.org/.