The evolving role of the institutional
repository in promoting Library Research
Support
Jessica Eustace: SFI Research Support Librarian
Garret McMahon: Institutional Repository Content Manager
Niamh Brennan, Programme Manager, Trinity College Library Dublin
Donal Lyons, Senior Analyst, MIS, Trinity College Dublin

Investment in Irish Research:
• Over the past 10 years expenditure on Higher
Education R&D has quadrupled
• Now reached OECD & EU-25 average HERD
intensity ratio
• between 2004 and 2006 the number of
Researchers in Higher Education increased by
13%

o Strategic decision to develop world-
class research system in Ireland
o Increase research capacity, quality
and output
o Develop 4th Level Ireland
o Double PhD output, structure
training, develop careers, encourage
mobility
o Estimated additional cost of €1.88
billion to 2013
o Spending predicted of €2.7 billion to
2008 to implement strategy
o Provision for:
350 PI’s
1050 Postdocs
3500 PhD Students

warned”
s
, college
bn
get of €2
d
ustify bu
“J
UNIVERSITIES and colleges will have to justify their €2bn budget
as part of an unprecedented government investigation into
third-level spending.
By Ralph Riegel and John Walshe, Irish Independent, Thursday August 14 2008

TCD Research Support System Brief/Context
“A coherent information policy for College
to address the needs of management,
the Library, e-learning, electronic
publications and records management
will be developed with a view to having
an integrated view of information
systems across the whole of College.

CURRENT RESEARCH INFORMATION SYSTEM
- CV-driven
- Fully integrated with complementary systems
- initial population from Human Resources records
- updated & enhanced ‘live’ by researcher,
- mediated input on-demand (Library-based service)

Research Profile on College Staff Directory

Personal URL/Research Webpage

Live feed on to School webpages

• Research publications
• Etheses
• Epublishing/Grey Literature
• Images

Bibliographic records from ISI:
- Integrated with ISI institutional Citation Report for TCD
- By agreement with ISI
- Specifically requested by researchers

Handling Bibliographic Data: EndNote

- Fully integrated with Research Support System
- Added value to records in both systems

Repository with Added Value
Link to Researcher’s Profile
Link to live ISI Citation Record

Research Support System with Fulltext Links

IEEE Signal Processing Magazine

TCD Institutional Repository - in an Integrated Environment
Library
Research Support System
• Bibliographic metadata
Web Services Human
(inc. ISI)
Institutional Resources
• Research Expertise
Repository • Project tracking
Physical
FTP server Resources
DMZ
DMZ
Financials
Web server
External Bodies
External Bodies
External Bodies Student
• The web /
• expertiseireland.com Administration
•Search engines etc. • Thesis Print-Shop
• Portal Reviewers
• OAI harvesters

Electronic theses:
• Enhanced access
• Better search
functionality
• Alerts
• Usage Statistics
• Inclusion with other
research material in
repository

Student:
Adds metadata
Uploads file/s
Applies restriction (if any)
Agrees to Licence
Supervisor:
Checks -
Correct file
Reject
Restriction/Stay
Keywords
Citations/Sponsors
Library:
Checks metadata
Approve
Assigns LCSH
Commits to archive
[Record exported to GEAC]
Reject Graduate Studies Office/Dean:
1. Approves/disapproves
Approve
Approve
application for stay
Student:
Adds note & contact details
Issues command to print the
thesis
Theses Centre:
Prints thesis
Contacts student

The Benefits to the Researcher
Promotion of your research and that of your group
•
• Facility to generate and download a personal Curriculum Vitae.
• A personal URL to link to from your business card or website
• A means of creating and maintaining up-to-date publications lists.
• A means of generating reports for internal and external use
• Automatic inclusion in the annual TCD Calendar’s list of publications.
• A means of avoiding repetition in the request-for / provision-of information
• An opportunity for your research profile to be exported to the Expertise Ireland portal.
• Details from your RSS profile can be automatically used for your internal grant applications.
• ‘Live feed’ of information from the RSS onto School web pages
• Upload the full text of publications (subject to copyright) directly into TCD’s open access digital
repository and maximise its audience and impact on the world wide web.
• Comply with funders’ mandates for dissemination of research outputs

Background
• Started at TCD in May 2007
• Job title SFI Research Support Librarian
– Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) is a key organisation in the
implementation of the NDP 2007-2013 and the Strategy for
Science, Technology and Innovation 2006-2013. A sum of €8.2
billion has been allocated for scientific research under the NDP
and SSTI of which SFI has responsibility to invest €1.4 billion. SFI
will continue to invest in academic researchers and research
teams who are most likely to generate new knowledge, leading
edge technologies and competitive enterprises in the fields of
science and engineering underpinning three broad areas:
• Biotechnology
• Information and communications technology
• Sustainable energy and energy-efficient technologies

Job Profile
• Job profile was to provide “research support to
SFI funded researchers”
– How was this interpreted?
• Support for anyone who had received SFI funding in
last 3 years
• Support any students who worked for an SFI funded
Principal Investigator

Job Role
Liaise directly with SFI researchers to establish their research information
•
requirements
Collaborate with the Sub-Librarians for Science, Medicine, Engineering &
•
Electronic Resources and develop and implement a strategy to meet the
researcher needs
Collaborate with the Research Support System Project Manager, Niamh
•
Brennan, and Garret McMahon, Institutional Repository Content Manager,
in developing research profiles for each individual SFI researcher, thereby
playing a role in the promotion and exposure of their research output,
within the Research Support System (RSS)
Actively assist in the deposit of Open Access material within Trinity’s
•
Institutional Repository TARA (Trinity’s Access to Research Archive)
Actively promote and provide training on the myriad of electronic resources
•
under subscription at TCD in a 1 to 1 capacity.

Challenges
• How to reach researchers at different levels of their
career?
– Postgraduates can be hard to access in their labs
– Research Fellows have blended needs for teaching and
also their research needs
– Principal Investigators are experts in their field and find it
hard to see the relevance of the Library when they can
access material online.
• Common Issues
– Time is of the essence – too much to do - too little time ->
How could I help?

The Grassroots Approach for
Postgraduates
• Endnote Training
• Specialist Training Days on Database Tips and
Tricks
• Going into labs and helping them on a 1 to 1
basis
• Drop in sessions for Endnote Queries

Top Level Approach for PIs and
Research Fellows
• Provide Researcher Profiling
• Provide Assisted Deposit into TARA
• 1 to 1 training on using the RSS and TARA
deposit

What does the RSS and the IR allow me to
do?
• Allows me to become part of the research
work flow?
• Provides a tangible means in which the library
can provide “measurable support” to the
research community.
– Important for funding of my position
• So how do I do this?

Work Flow for Research Profiling
Graduate RSS Project
Staff Office Dept. Head
Office Team
SFI
Current Researcher New
Member of Member of
Staff Staff
Email contact via newsletter
Introduction of SFI Librarian
offering development of
– offer of training for DBs
research profile within the
and Endnote
RSS
Request for CV to create RSS and Profiling described
RSS profile and creation offered
RSS Profile created – added RSS Profile created – added
Shared
value: full publications list value: full publications list
publication
created with embedded url created with embedded url
list with team
and DOI links and DOI links
members

Adding Value to the RSS
Quality Control on Bibliographic Data
•
URL to Publisher Full Text
•
DOI links
•
PubMed IDs
•
Team Publication Sharing
•
Links to external data sources e.g. conference
•
presentations where available

Adding Value: Quality Control of
Bibliographic Record
PubMed
Publisher Websites
Google Scholar
SCOPUS
Web of Knowledge
Common Errors:
Incorrect Titles
Missing Issue Numbers
Missing Page Numbers
Spelling
Missing Authors

Adding Value: urls, PMIDs
and dois

Sharing Publications with Team
Members

Benefits of Team Sharing
• The RSS allows team sharing of articles and
links profiles
• Material only has to be entered in once for the
team leader and manually shared using the RSS
– no repetition of controlled bibliographic data
as it filters down

Benefits of Added
Value for Researcher
• Fuller picture of research profile – links to the
full text add another level of granularity
• Teaching Resource – can refer students to
profile for entire list of publications rather than
multiple databases
• Promotion of their research output
• A Quality Record with correct bibliographic
data and metadata which filters out to their
schools

Key Researcher Profiles

Key Researcher Profiles

Key Researcher Profiles

Key Researcher Profiles

Assisted Deposit into the
Institutional Repository (TARA)
Additional
Quality
Publisher URL links to
Shared
Control on all
embedded with presentations
DOI publications list
bibliographic
full text link where full
with other team
information text not
members
available
RSS Profile Created
Principal
Investigator and Research Students
Research Fellows
Training Offered on
Offer of assisted RSS and TARA
deposit deposit
Item Deposited
within TARA
Creation of a control
Fulfils compliance of
record which is streamed
SFI Open Access Accessible from
to Enterprise Ireland
Mandate Web Browsers

Assisted Deposit
• Author signs the TARA deposit license
• Researcher sends me his/her post peer reviewed
author versions of the papers
• Paper is converted to pdf format
• Each article is checked on the SHERPA ROMEO
website for the OA permission
• Bibliographic information is double checked
• Abstract from author copy and sponsors
acknowledgements are added into the TARA
record

Benefits for SFI Researcher
in Depositing in TARA
• Fulfils the new SFI Mandate for Open Access
which came into action from February 1st 2009
• Improves dissemination of publicly-funded
research and potentially widens readership
• Potential increase in numbers of citations
• Open access version of papers is accessible via
web browsers like Google, Google Scholar,
harvesters, bots etc.
• Citation and link to publisher version is always
provided

Promotion of the RSS and TARA
• Newsletters / Bulletins
– SFI TCD Library Bulletin
– Science, Engineering, Technology & Health
Research Newsletter
– Arts, Humanities & Social Science Research
Newsletter

Benefits of involvement with
the RSS and TARA for my Role
• Increased familiarity with their research
– Allow targeted training offers for the researcher and their
teams
– Arrange tips and trick sessions with expert providers for
our e-resources
• Increased communication with a hard to target group
– Creates a forum where they can ask research questions
• The Library becomes part of their research process
• Increased respect and knowledge about what my role
encompasses, and the Library provides for them

Acknowledgements
• Jessica Eustace – SFI Research Support Librarian – Trinity
College Dublin: eustacj@tcd.ie
• Garret McMahon – IR Content Manager – Trinity College
Dublin: garret.mcmahon@tcd.ie
Niamh Brennan – Programme Manager, Trinity College Dublin
•
Donal Lyons –Senior Analyst, MIS, Trinity College Dublin
•
Andrew Watson – Software Developer, Trinity College Dublin
•
Kevin Kiely – Software Developer, Trinity College Dublin
•