Open Research Online

Despite the clear advantage of broadening access to research, some academics are still concerned about depositing Accepted Manuscript versions of their research output in their institutional repository. I’ve written about this in the past on this blog, including highlighting other ways in which academics can look to embrace Open Access (i.e. through publishing in Open Access journals, or by looking to retain copyright).

Central to this issue is the worry that, for someone coming across a paper in an institutional repository, it may not be immediately obvious exactly what version of the paper is being viewed, especially if that paper is downloaded and becomes divorced from the repository itself. So, to help allay this concern, we have now established a coversheet system for ORO full text articles. For an example, open the PDF of this article deposited in ORO.

As you will see, not only does the coversheet make it clear that this is the Accepted Manuscript version of the paper, it also provides information on how to cite the paper and who the copyright holder is – two other very important elements. Not only that, but the coversheet also provides a bit of OU/ORO “branding”, which again is very significant should the article be downloaded and thus separated from the system.

The coversheets are generated “on-the-fly”, so we can change their content or design at any point in the future without having to physically edit every single item on ORO. We would just go in and edit the master template and then each coversheet would regenerate next time it is opened. For this reason, we have noticed that (occasionally) the PDF needs refreshing once opened before the coversheet appears. We think this is a glitch with the PDF conversion software and will continue to look into the problem. However, this issue should naturally phase out with time, as once a coversheet has been generated for the first time, it is then saved.

As with all new ORO developments, we welcome your feedback… but we are quietly confident this will be appreciated among ORO users! 

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 11:34 am by Nicola Dowson and is filed under Advocacy, ORO, Repository features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.