Integrated Workflow for Institutional Repository Enhancement
See a 30 second video introducing the I-Wire project
The project (I-WIRE) will develop a workflow and toolset, integrated into a portal environment, for the submission, indexing, and re-purposing of research outputs in Cardiff University's Institutional Repository ORCA This will be based on requirements gathered from academic Schools and administrative Directorates in the University.
The impetus for the project came from a decision by the University's Research Committee to approve the mandatory deposit of new publications in ORCA, "subject to detailed consideration as to the means by which staff up-load data to the repository". Consequently the I-WIRE project was established to look at ways to streamline the deposit process by developing a comprehensive submissions workflow that minimizes effort and simultaneously ensures capture of all required information without duplication of effort. A user friendly workflow will encourage author self deposit. The project also aims to place the process of depositing material in the institutional repository at the heart of the business processes being carried out through the research portal, so that deposit becomes an integrated part of a more general administrative, research or learning workflow.
Although this sounds like a technical development project, we are conscious that the success of the project depends on how effectively we engage with our users. A full requirements analysis will be included in the initial stages of the project and will be carried out before we attempt to design anything with our technical developers. A crucial first step is to understand the ways in which authors, Schools and administrative Directorates currently manage research data, so that we design a process that best meets their needs. We also propose to include value-added features, for example a feature enabling the data to be reused and repurposed to support the range of processes used in different stages of the research lifecycle. We have already found this to be a key feature for attracting users in the early stages of the project; encouraging them to put their data in the repository as opposed to other departmental databases with less structure and more limited functionality. As a result the repository will become the central database of research output and will facilitate the reuse of content in a variety of contexts and for a variety of users.
Both the workflows, and the toolset developed using Open Standards, will be available and applicable to other HE institutions, especially those using EPrints software.
Reports available
