Toward Easy Deposit: Lowering the Barriers of Green Open Access with Data Integration and Automation

This article describes the design and development of an interoperable application that supports green open access with long-term sustainability and improved user experience of article deposit. The lack of library resources and the unfriendly repository user interface are two significant barriers that hinder green open access. Tasked to implement the open access mandate, librarians at an American research university developed a comprehensive system called Easy Deposit 2 to automate the support workflow of green open access. Easy Deposit 2 is a web application that is able to harvest new publications, to source manuscripts on behalf of the library, and to facilitate self-archiving to a university’s institutional repository. The article deposit rate increased from 7.40% to 25.60% with the launch of Easy Deposit 2. The results show that a computer system can implement routine tasks to support green open access with success. Recent developments in digital repository provide new opportunities for innovation, such as Easy Deposit 2, in supporting open access. Academic librarians are vital in promoting “openness” in scholarly communication, such as transparency and diversity in the sharing of publication data.

Towards Easy Deposit: Lowering the Barriers of Green Open Access with Data Integration and Automation

This proposal describes the design and development of an interoperable application that supports green open access with long-term sustainability and improved user experience of article deposit. Introduction: The lack of library resources and unfriendly repository user interface are two significant barriers that hinder green open access. Tasked to implement the open access mandate, librarians at an American research university developed a comprehensive system called Easy Deposit 2 to automate the support workflow of green open access. Implementation: Easy Deposit 2 is a web application that is able to harvest newly publications, outreach for manuscript on behalf of the library, and facilitate self-archiving to IR. It is developed and maintained by the library and integrated with the IR. Results and Discussion: The article deposit rate is about 25% with Easy Deposit 2, which increases significantly comparing to the previous period. It also serves as a local database for faculty publications with open access status. The lesson learned is that library cannot rely on a single commercial provider for publication data due to mismatched priorities. Conclusion: Recent IT developments provides new opportunities of innovation like Easy Deposit 2 in supporting open access. Academic librarians are vital in promoting "openness" in scholarly communication such as transparency and diversity in the sharing of publication data.

Green Deposit Rates in LIS Taylor & Francis Journals: Are Librarians “Practicing What They Preach?”

A Review of: Emery, J. (2017). How green is our valley: Five year study of selected LIS journals from Taylor & Francis for green open access. Insights, 31(23). http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.406 Abstract Objective – To investigate the green deposit rate for articles published in five Taylor & Francis LIS journals. Design – Content analysis. Setting – The author conducted an analysis of the following journals: Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, Collection Management, College & Undergraduate Libraries, Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship and Journal of Library Administration. Subjects – 87 articles/columns in Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 78 in Collection Management, 134 in College & Undergraduate Libraries, 108 in Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, and 264 in Journal of Library Administration. Methods – The author chose five Taylor & Francis LIS journals to analyze over a period of five years for the green open access article deposit rate. The author selected Taylor & Francis journals due to the publisher’s policy of not requiring an embargo period on LIS journals. The specific journal titles were selected based on the author’s perception of their relevance to a broad array of academic libraries. The author determined if green deposit had occurred by first using the “OA Button” on the article’s homepage to locate the full text. If nothing was found, the author then searched each author’s institutional repository using the DOI. If the full text was still not located using this method, then a Google Scholar search for the full text was performed. Main Results – The author found that the full text was available for 22% of the 671 total articles included in the study, which was significantly below the author’s proposed success rate of 50%. Conclusion – The results of this study indicate that a relatively low number of articles in the LIS field are available via open access, even though there were no restrictions from the publisher on green deposits. Some potential influencing factors for the low deposit rate include lack of encouragement from administration on utilizing repositories, imposter syndrome, and a lack of awareness of Taylor & Francis’s green deposit policies. The author recommends that librarians and their administrators support and encourage one another to make articles available via open access. The author also recommends that Taylor & Francis further publicize this policy to make more authors aware of it.

What Is an Institutional Repository to Do? Implementing Open Access Harvesting Workflows

In 2016, Florida State University adopted an institutional Open Access policy, and the library staff were tasked with implementing an outreach plan to contact authors and collect publication post-prints. In 2018, I presented at Open Repositories in Bozeman to share our workflow, methods, and results with the repository community. This workflow utilizes both restricted and open source methods of obtaining and creating research metadata and reaching out to authors to make their work more easily accessible and citable. Currently, post-print deposits added using this workflow are still in the double digits for each year since 2016. Like many institutions before us, participation rates of article deposit in the institutional repository are low and it may be too early in the implementation of this workflow to expect a real change in faculty participation.