Leslie Carr and John MacColl, IRRA RAE Software for Institutional Repositories, IRRA, December 19, 2005. A white paper from the IRRA project (Institutional Repositories and Research Assessment) on the UK RAE (Research Assessment Exercise). Excerpt:
RAE 2008 is the latest UK research assessment exercise designed to inform the selective distribution of public funds for research by the UK's higher education funding bodies. Like previous exercises, RAE 2008 will be based upon expert review by discipline-based panels considering written submission from participating institutions. It is managed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of all UK HE Funding Councils....The aim of the IRRA project is to ease the [RAE] data collection task by embedding it into the processes of the institutional repository. Most UK universities engaged in significant amounts of research now either have an institutional repository, or are actively planning to introduce one. Our Project has identified two types of institutional repository which are being created in response to institutional policies on research publications: (a) Repositories which act as comprehensive research publication repositories (therefore accommodating a mix of metadata-only and metadata+full-text items), (b) Repositories which act as open access research publication repositories, holding metadata+full-text items only. IRRA will provide solutions for both types. In the case of type (a), the repository should hold all of the researchers' publications, and should be updated as a matter of course. In such an environment, the researcher need only make a simple form-based selection to have their submission passed on to their academic administrator. In trials at the University of Southampton, where the use of a repository is accepted, this has radically reduced the effort required by (and complaints from) the researchers and lecturers. Project IRRA will build on this trial work, which resulted in Southampton's repository being extended with functionality that permits its use for research quality assessment...In the case of type (b), IRRA will provide a web application which will interface with the open access institutional repository, but will permit the loading of records both directly and by import from other systems (such as a separate publications repository). This solution will also be the sole solution for DSpace sites, since the DSpace software makes type (a) repositories more difficult to achieve (the software assumes metadata+full-text deposits). The project therefore aims to produce a plug-in for the GNU EPrints platform and a separate web application for DSpace designed as a tool to create an institutional RAE publications repository. Both of these software products will interoperate with the many Research Management systems which are being developed by UK universities to cater, amongst other things, for the non-research outputs data required by RAE2008....The final versions of IRRA RAE software products for DSpace and GNU Eprints will be available in summer 2006 (earlier development releases will be available from January 2006). Workshops will also be run across the UK to train institutions in use of IRRA software in the summer 2006.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/19/2005 07:59:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
