I-WIRE Evaluation Pete Dalton and Jo Alcock Evidence Base, Birmingham City University

Evaluation methods Findings: - Achievements of I-WIRE - Challenges faced - Lessons learned - Looking forward Summary Overview

Review of project documents: - Progress reports and newsletters - Minutes of meetings - Lessons log and feedback - Project website and blog Interviews with PMG: - May February 2011 Evaluation methods

Achievements

Submission and metadata workflow to minimise staff effort and simplify deposit I have no doubt that the project will achieve its aims of delivering an automated, easy to use, deposit tool

Integrated Manage My Publications portlet within Cardiff University intranet A major achievement was getting the portlet integrated; the portal is externally facing but shows a different display depending on your login

Well managed project with pragmatic decisions to move work forward There has been clarity of information, we were kept up-to-date, issues were dealt with effectively, and actions were done

Effective communication Communication has been excellent throughout…Communication (within the project team and wider) has included , meetings, blog, internal newsletter articles, inclusion in annual report

Development based on detailed user requirements I-WIRE Project… produced a comprehensive list of user requirements (I-WIRE Requirements). These include the easy reuse of bibliographic data by researchers and the ongoing collection of usage or impact metrics Russell, R. and Day, M. (2010) Institutional Repository Interaction with Research Users: A Review of Current Practice. New Review of Academic Librarianship (Vol 16, supp. 1, pp )

Development of new knowledge for PMG which can be passed to colleagues...better understanding of repositories and an understanding of how repositories can help increase citations (through open access publishing in the repository)

Challenges

Reduced timescale due to recruitment

Technical challenges (software not fit for purpose)

Workflows for Schools currently using local systems

Issues around researcher’s understanding of copyright and publisher’s open access policies

Lessons learned

Success factors Senior management support Good project management and communication Agile approach and pragmatic solutions Fixed timescales and deadlines Representation of appropriate stakeholders Driven by user requirements Dedicated resource for project appropriate for needs Appropriate technical and management skills Access to key stakeholders for promotion Focus on most appropriate technology

Looking forward

Institutional deposit mandate From University management there should be a mandate to deposit research into the repository

Advocacy we are competing with a number of different priorities within the University and at the moment this may not be a high priority for researchers

Integration with existing workflows and systems...further investment from the University is needed in order to provide enhancement/support, integration with other systems, and embedding into Schools... further investment from the University is needed in order to provide enhancement/support, integration with other systems, and embedding into Schools

Back end support for deposit...the back end will need reorganising of staff workloads within the team to support the quality checking. This is high profile within the University so we absolutely have to get it right

Ongoing maintenance and support for the system Ongoing support for the software - there is no plan for the future support of the software and it is vulnerable to software updates to any of the related technologies or changes to any of the technologies used within the Schools

Summary Project addressed many challenges, achieved what it set out to do Next steps crucial in coordinating technical, policy, and change issues

Evidence Base Research and Evaluation Services Birmingham City University Pete Jo Alcock Thank You

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