Quick guide

Open access: discovery, usage and impact

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The issue

To ensure the full benefits of open access (OA) research are realised, it must be made easy to find and use. But simply placing research outputs in an institutional repository is not enough.

You can take steps to raise the visibility of your institution’s repository and help ensure users can find and use relevant content.

Measuring the reach of research is a valuable way for institutions to demonstrate impact, as required for example for the research excellence framework (REF). Being able to track and benchmark usage can help identify trends within your own repository and your research, and compare performance with other institutions. 

What you can do

Ensure your repository is discoverable

In order to ensure that content in your repository can be found, register it with OpenDOAR, an authoritative listing of academic repositories. Every repository listed has been evaluated and described to include details such as subject area, content type, country and language. This means users can search for the most relevant repository.

Once registered with OpenDOAR, your repository can be picked up by other services such as CORE, which aggregates OA content, benefiting those whose content is used and increasing its impact. As well as offering a web-based search engine, it also provides programmable access to metadata and full-text for text mining.

Search engines, such as Google, provide guidelines on taking steps to ensure your content can be accessed. Our guidance on making Google searches work for you has some helpful resources to get started.

Make your content discoverable and usable

Standardised records for your repository content, like RIOXX metadata records, are easier for search services like CORE (and, arguably, Google Scholar) to handle.

RIOXX records also include a licence statement, so readers know what they can do with the content. 

Create a policy for your repository

Having a clear policy on what is available in your repository, how it can be re-used and what commitments you make to preserve it, makes it more likely that others will use your content.

OpenDOAR provides a tool to support the development of a repository policy.

Encourage repository use

You can make it easier for your staff and students to make the most of repository content by providing different methods of accessing content on your own website.

Customised search and analysis tools can be created using the CORE index and its application programming interface (API). Potential uses include text mining, linking publications to research data and citation analysis.

CORE also provides a repository plugin, which provides recommendations on related publications to users.

To encourage use of material within your repository consider implementing a copy request button. This allows individual researchers to request a copy of an article even though it may not be available open access, for example due to a publisher’s embargo.

You can also encourage users to use a browser plugin to discover open access content when they find an article which requires payment, such as CORE Discovery or Unpaywall. 

Track and benchmark usage

Knowing how many people are accessing your repository provides valuable evidence of potential impact.

IRUS-UK provides standards-based download statistics, which can be used to report to institutional managers, researchers and research funders.

You can use IRUS-UK to compare how your repository, and research, is doing compared to your peer institutions. To use this service, install the IRUS tracker plugin on your repository.

There are case studies and use cases describing how repositories are using IRUS-UK data in their reporting, benchmarking and supporting advocacy. There is also a widget to display repository statistics on your own repository. 

JUSP (Journal Usage Statistics Portal) offers a way to track your own institution’s use of articles in published journals, for example those published through Gold OA1 models in hybrid journals.

Footnotes