[Irtalk] Increasing research visibility through bibliographic records

[Smith, Ina <ismith@sun.ac.za>]

In Africa the reality is that we have unsufficient resources to populate all our research repositories with full text - from beginning (when the university was established) to end. Most of us try to at least populate the repository with all new full text articles published.

Some ways one can use to increase visibilty of research output, without having the full text for all:

Method 1: Bibliographic records in a library catalogue are not indexed by Google. As soon as you export your bibliographic records for theses & dissertations from the catalogue to DSpace, Google will start indexing it. This way people will have a better idea of what is being researched at your university. It is easy to import a csv into DSpace. The data should adhere to certain requirements. You can then - with time - digitise the full text and attach it to the bibliographic record. We keep those bibliographic records separately, and only integrate it with the departments once the full text has been attached. See http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/49230

Method 2: What you can do with new research articles: setup Scopus or Google Citations (if your researchers have Google profiles and keep them up to date) alerts, then receive an alert everytime new articles are published by your researchers. The ideal is for the faculty librarians to immediately follow up with the researchers, and get hold of the post-print copy of an article once it has been published.

Method 3: For retrospective research articles - contact your Research Office, and get hold of a csv file for all research output as far back possible. Prepare those files in Excel, and import into DSpace. With time you can then attach the full text post-print.

Method 4: Utilise social media tools to mention items in your repository. Use the repository URL everywhere. If possible, also add the URL as a header for each pdf document, so that people know where they got the original from, and can cite it accordingly.

Method 5: Establish a workflow between the Registrars' Office and the repository. Students should submit their own theses/dissertations in the correct format. Remember - you do not want to add to the workload of existing staff.

Even though it will only be bibliographic records, already it will be more visible, researchers will start coming forward and provide you with the full text (add a note in item record that they should please provide you with the full text), people will start contacting you and ask you to prioritise certain items, and slowly but surely you will start populating your repository even more.

Kind regards
Ina
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