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Thoth Archiving Network goes live at Cambridge
Dr Agustina Martínez-García, Head of Open Research Systems, Digital Initiatives Cambridge University Library (CUL) is piloting participation in the Thoth Archiving Network, which allows small presses to use a simple deposit option to archive their publications in multiple repository locations, creating the opportunity to safeguard against the complete loss of their open books catalogue, should they cease to operate. Participation in the pilot has allowed us to explore the implementation of suitable infrastructure, built on interoperable, open, and widely adopted platforms to support discovery, access, and long-term availability of open scholarly works. Work done so far We are pleased to share that the Cambridge repository platform participating in the Thoth…
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Open access: fringe or mainstream?
When I was just settling in to the world of open access and scholarly communication, I wrote about the need for open access to stop being a fringe activity and enter the mainstream of researcher behaviour: “Open access needs to stop being a ‘fringe’ activity and become part of the mainstream. It shouldn’t be an afterthought to the publication process. Whether the solution to academic inaction is better systems or, as I believe, greater engagement and reward, I feel that the scholarly communications and repository community can look forward to many interesting developments over the coming months and years.” While much has changed in the five years since I (somewhat…
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A Fast-Track Route to Open Access
In the last two years, since the REF 2021 open access policy came into force, the Open Access Team has received an ever increasing number of manuscript submissions for archiving in Apollo, Cambridge’s institutional open access repository. We have been thinking long and hard about ways to cope with the workload, by scrutinising existing practices and streamlining workflows, because we want to provide the best possible service to our researchers, commensurate with the University’s world leading research. This blog introduces what is perhaps the greatest overhaul of our workflows since the service began: a new ‘Fast Track’ deposit system. Work it harder Before the start of the REF OA policy (2014-2016),…
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Where are we now? Cambridge theses deposits one year in
As the nights draw in and the academic year 2018/19 begins, we are preparing to enter our second year of compulsory e-theses deposits. Our university repository, Apollo, is close to holding 6000 digital PhD theses and it is the intention of the University that this valuable research asset continues to grow into the future. The Apollo repository will play a large part in making this happen. Until recently only hardbound copies of theses were collected and catalogued by the University Library. Users could read theses on-site in Cambridge or order a digitisation of the thesis, but the introduction of e-thesis deposit to Apollo has meant that University of Cambridge theses are more…
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How open is Cambridge? 2017 edition
Welcome to Open Access Week 2017. The Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge is celebrating with a series of blog posts, announcements and events. In today’s blog post we revisit the question about the openness of Cambridge. For Open Access week last year I looked at how open Cambridge was using the extremely useful Lantern tool, developed by Cottage Labs, and which is the basis of the Wellcome Trust’s compliance tool. If you haven’t used it before, Lantern takes a list of DOIs, PMIDs, or PMCIDs and runs these through a variety of sources to try and determine the Open Access status of the publication. I found that, for publications in 2015, 51.8% of all of…
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Milestone -1000 datasets in Cambridge’s repository
Last week, Cambridge celebrated a huge milestone – the deposit of the 1000th dataset to our repository Apollo since the launch of the Research Data Facility in early 2015. This is the culmination of a huge amount of work by the team in the Office of Scholarly Communication, in terms of developing systems, workflows, policies and through an extensive advocacy campaign. The Research Data team have run 118 events over the past couple of years and published 39 blogs. In the past 12 months alone there have been 26000 downloads of the data in Apollo. In some cases the dataset has been downloaded many times – 170 – and the data…
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Who is requesting what through Cambridge’s Request a Copy service?
In October last year we reported on the first four months of our Request a Copy service. Now, 15 months in, we have had over 3000 requests and this provides us with a rich source of information to mine about the users of our repository. The dataset underpinning the findings described here is available in the repository. What are people requesting? We have had 3240 requests through the system since its inception in June 2016. Of those the vast majority have been for articles 1878 (58%) and theses 1276 (39%). The remaining requests are for book chapters, conference objects, datasets, images and manuscripts. It should be noted that most datasets…
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2016 – that was the year that was
In January last year we published a blog post ‘2015 that was the year that was‘ which not only helped us take stock about what we have achieved, but also was very well received. So we have decided to do it again. For those who are more visually oriented, the slides ‘The OSC a lightning Tour‘ might be useful. Now starting its third year of operation, the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) has expanded to a team of 15, managing a wide variety of projects. The OSC has developed a set of strategic goals to support its mission: “The OSC works in a transparent and rigorous manner to provide recognised leadership…
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Mission Open Access: the Apollo repository launches
To celebrate Open Access Week 2016, the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) officially launched ‘Apollo’, the University of Cambridge’s upgraded open access repository. Researchers, University research staff and librarians gathered at the University’s Engineering Department to see a demonstration of the new features of Apollo, speak to some of the University’s Open Access Champions and raise a glass to launch the service. The repository stores a range of content and provides different levels of access, but its primary focus is on providing open access to the University’s research publications. Apollo forms an important part of the University’s provision for meeting research funder requirements for open access, enabling ‘Green’ access to…
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Request a copy: process and implementation
This blog post looks at a recent feature implemented in our repository called ‘Request a copy’ and discusses the process and management of the service. There is a related blog post which discusses the uptake and reaction to the facility. As part of our recent upgrade to the University’s institutional repository (now renamed ‘Apollo‘), we implemented a new feature called ‘Request a copy’. ‘Request a copy’ operates on the principle of peer-to-peer sharing – if an item in Apollo is not yet available to the public, a repository user can ask the author for a copy of the item. Authors sharing copies of their work on an individual basis falls outside…
