JISC

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The Embed project set out to explore cultural barriers which constrain the engagement of research communities at two different institutions with their respective Institutional Repositories. Broadly the goals of the project were to identify solutions to these barriers to encourage increased content submission, repository enhancement, and the sustainability of the services.

Executive Summary

Following a detailed user requirement study with researchers from a number of subject disciplines a revised set of aims and objectives were identified as below:

• Investigate and test sustainable advocacy strategies appropriate to the cultures and stage of development of the Institutional Repositories (IRs) at the two institutions
• Investigate the applicability and sustainability of a set of value added services
• Understand the publication processes and the associated workflows which affect willingness to submit
• Investigate system requirements for an effective submission process
• Develop and test a system concept amongst research communities at both institutions
• Assess the impact of both the advocacy and proposed system concepts on existing job roles

Work pre-dating Embed established broad principles of advocacy, but the project designed and tested, in detail, multiple strategies to raise awareness and to change perceptions and attitudes towards the repositories. At Cranfield University this involved a broad based approach which not only re-launched and re-branded the repository but also followed this up with a sustained professionally designed campaign aligned closely to the changing research agenda. At the Robert Gordon University a more targeted strategy was developed which identified would-be champions in key positions within the University research community and senior management and allied this to the involvement of key Faculty Liaison Advisors (whose annual ‘objectives’ included specific targets relating to the IR).

These strategies induced a number of positive outcomes including:

• A significant increase in submission rates at both institutions
• The inclusion of a greater variety of material in the RGU IR, including representations of art work
• Substantial evidence of raised awareness and associated cultural change.

At Cranfield the IR has been transformed from a purely “library activity” to its recognition as an essential component of the research management and dissemination process. At RGU there is evidence of a greater understanding of the opportunities afforded by the IR, particularly in terms of publicity for a range of research output. Formal operational changes at RGU involving Library and Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee staff have significantly raised the profile of the IR within this institution.

Within the timescale of the project it has been possible to identify the requirements for a system which would facilitate the more effective management of research outputs from submission to external exposure. The concept of repositioning the repository within an integrated Current Research Information System (CRIS) was tested in a final user evaluation. Although it has not been possible to build the CRIS during the lifetime of the project, nevertheless a number of useful conclusions can be drawn from this work including:

• The requirement for a flexible single submission system providing for one time deposit and uploading to multiple external dissemination outlets including IRs, subject repositories, personal and departmental web pages.
• The single submission system must be capable of collecting deposits at an early stage in the publication process, the optimum time appears to be when an item is accepted for publication.
• The need for more training and advocacy to ensure that researchers retain final pre-publication versions of their work where appropriate.
• The need for more guidance to researchers who produce output, such as art work, in non-print formats.

The project explored a number of repository service enhancements which are likely to underline the importance of IRs as tools for raising the visibility of researchers and demonstrating the impact of research outputs. These include: multi-media abstracts (podstracts); active dissemination strategies; Request Copy functionality; and repository statistics

Finally the project considered the implications and impact of delivering an enhanced service on existing repository support teams. A number of implications and recommendations are identified within the report and a comprehensive set of project outputs have been made available to the wider community via the Embed wiki.