Encouraging Open Access and supporting research impact: a data-driven approach

Abstract

Based within the University of Plymouth library, the open research and repository support team have worked over the last 18 months to support the development of a wider open access culture that goes beyond pure REF policy compliance. Working with partners across the organisation, we have developed our systems to improve user experiences and provide consistent and trustworthy reporting. In this poster we will share how we combine data from IRUS-UK, Google Analytics and our repository statistics module to create interactive user engagement reports, highlighting popular items from the PEARL repository. By using data to explore the routes that our readers take to find and access research, we are able to provide researchers with evidence of the wider benefits of their efforts to make their research open access by showing its global reach. We will include examples where we can evidence that the open access version of papers receive higher abstract views and downloads that the publisher’s version of record for key areas of research. We will share how our collaborative relationships with Academic Engagement librarians and the University’s Research and Innovation team enable us to direct these evidenced benefits of open access to our researchers across the University. Finally we will share our future plans to expand our work by exploring other methods of retrieving stats including new ways to monitor overall repository performance, and using social media to extend our ability to promote newly released research.