Bringing a buzz to NECTAR:
Outcomes and impact
Miggie Pickton
'How embedded and integrated is your repository?‘
JISCrte event, Nottingham, 10th February 2012
Context for the project
• Well established (since 2007/8) repository at a ‘new’
university
• Already successful in research reporting but less so in
providing open access to full text
• Highly mediated service proving difficult to sustain
• Mandate for electronic submission of theses took effect
January 2011
• Like everyone else, we’re wondering how we can best
support the REF
Project objectives
•
To modify university procedures for submission to NECTAR
increase researcher involvement, encourage the deposit of full
content and further embed NECTAR in researcher workflows.
•
To implement technical and procedural changes as necessary to
ensure NECTAR is compatible with the requirements of the British
Library’s EThOS service.
•
To implement technical and procedural solutions (when available)
to ensure NECTAR is ready to support the Research Excellence
Framework (REF).
•
Through implementation of the Eprints Kultur plugin and
rebranding of the repository interface, to better display the
creative research outputs of the institution and to visually embed
NECTAR within The University of Northampton’s new university
website.
Project objectives
•
To implement the sector’s best ideas for new ‘added value’
services from NECTAR to increase the perceived benefit of
NECTAR.
•
To provide a programme of appropriate training, advocacy and
promotional activity to support the changes described above.
•
To collaborate with colleagues in the Repositories Support
Project (RSP) and UKCoRR to ensure that best practice is
followed.
Project outputs - website
• NECTAR rebranded to match the university website
• Eprints Services implemented the Kultur extension in
NECTAR. This included:
– Scrolling display of images on home page
– Reformatted item pages which present full content (if
available) before metadata
• Other changes to home page content:
– replacement of the ‘top 5 papers’ list with a ‘latest
additions’ list
– minor changes in response to researcher feedback
Project outputs - workflow
• Changes to data entry procedures have been implemented
and promoted
• In conjunction with the university’s Graduate School:
– metadata (including Abstracts) have been uploaded to
NECTAR for all University of Northampton theses
– procedures for submission of electronic copies of theses
have been updated and approved by Research Degrees
Committee
• With Eprints Services’ help we have made the changes
necessary for NECTAR to comply with EThOS; we are now
waiting for EThOS to start harvesting our data
Project outputs – advocacy and liaison
• Advocacy activity included presentations to research groups
and School Research Forums – where possible with School
NECTAR administrators and Academic Librarians in
attendance
• NECTAR training sessions were offered as part of the
university’s IT training programme
• An Open Access Week event was planned and heavily
promoted but eventually postponed due to poor uptake...
• ... but our VC has promised to host a future event and
shown his support for OA in an interview
Project outputs – value added services
• Researchers are now notified by email when their items are
deposited in live NECTAR (thank you to William Nixon)
• NECTAR bibliographies on School Research web pages have
been revised in response to researcher feedback (e.g.
Science and Technology)
• Personal NECTAR bibliographies are now output to staff
profile pages (e.g. Livingstone)
• Improved statistics for NECTAR usage are gathered on a
regular basis (using Google Analytics and IRStats)
Project outcomes – NECTAR stats
• Researcher activity:
– 293 researchers now have NECTAR logins
– 69 of these have already entered details of 321 items
• Increase in full content:
– no. of items with open access content have increased by
50%
– twice as many again have restricted content – mostly
awaiting processing
Project impact - Northampton
• The ability to enter their own work has increased
researcher engagement, and the likelihood of full text being
uploaded
• The publications lists on staff profile page have gone down
particularly well, prompting queries to the NECTAR team
and increased interest in the repository
• Research managers and administrators value the
information they can derive from NECTAR.
• The need for additional support for NECTAR has finally been
recognised; a new ‘Research Information Specialist’ was
appointed in December
Project impact – beyond Northampton
• We have taken existing tools and services and applied
these to NECTAR
• Our experiences have been described in the project reports,
two technical notices, several events and a forthcoming
article in ALISS
• We are happy to share our experiences, through the
UKCORR-DISCUSSION mailing list and personal
communication – please do get in touch
If you want to know more about any part of the project
then please contact
Miggie Pickton
NECTAR Queen Bee
[email protected]
We are grateful to the JISC for their support.