Consortium within a consortium: the basis for the York service model

Elizabeth Heaps (University Librarian)

Elizabeth Harbord (Head of Collection Management)

University of York profile

Founded 1962 6th smallest UK university - 10,000 students Development plans to increase to 15,000 over 5-10

years 24 departments and research centres Evenly balanced between sciences, social sciences

and humanities Devolved structure - no faculties

White Rose and SHERPA

Invited to join in SHERPA project bid as a member of White Rose– White Rose is the universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York,

the research universities of Yorkshire

SHERPA was a successful bid to the JISC FAIR project– http://www.sherpa.ac.uk – Led by Nottingham University– Other members include Oxford, Glasgow, White Rose, BL

and MIMAS– All members of CURL apart from York (and MIMAS)

Consortium model

Our participation was intended to trial the consortium model within the project consortium of individual partners

Initial decisions

Driven by the project objectives - advocacy and content – and limited funding

Collaboration within White Rose:– Server location and choice of software– Establishing way of working collaboratively (WR project

group of 3)– Awareness of the different contexts: each university starting

from different points in terms of advocacy– Practical issues before policy

Phase 1 : May 2003 to May 2004

Server set-up and customisation– One repository or three on same server? – Software installation ( customisation and security)– Subject access (each university has a different structure and

uses different names for departments) – 4 papers loaded by May 2004

Staffing– SHERPA funding of .2FTE for each partner i.e. White Rose– Additional funding sought and full-time project officer, based

at Leeds but shared between the three universities, appointed June 2004

Phase 2 : June 2004 to date

Faster progress is now being made in gathering content and advocacy

139 papers loaded on to repository (53 from York) Meetings held with senior academic staff and

committees; more planned Scientific Committee report helpful in raising

awareness Policy issues identified for discussion and resolution

Policy issues which have arisen at York Content:

– Peer-reviewed, working papers, theses– Role in relation to promotion applications and RAE– Methods of gathering content (target publishers/journals

known to allow archiving and look for York authors, or ask individuals for their publications, many of which it may not be possible to archive)

Copyright: Romeo list, but what if the publisher isn’t listed or its position is unclear?

IPR: university policy needs clarifying in relation to publications

Policy issues (cont)

Uploading – mediated or not ? relates to.. Quality control – metadata ….and Longer term sustainability Advocacy – to gain university support for using the

repository (bottom-up and top-down) Deposit and distribution licences - wording Plagiarism – will repository encourage this? Preservation – especially important with non peer-

reviewed material Security – could content be altered in the repository?

Collaboration – does it work?

Benefits– Share expertise (e.g. IT support, advocacy material, staffing)– Save money (one server, not three)– White Rose is a research “brand”– View so far is that the joint repository should be retained,

after the SHERPA project ends in Nov 2005

Potential disadvantages– Institutions want to maintain their own identity– Different situations require different methods e.g. in acquiring

content or decisions about which content should be included

What next at York?

Presentations to Information Committee and Research Committee– Scholarly communication, open access journals, institutional

repositories

Sub-group of the two committees– Policies, e.g. on peer-reviewed content– Effects on research process especially RAE

Continuation of project officer for additional year until embedded

Future considerations

Continuation of consortial working or establishment of our own server

Extension of content coverage to other research materials, learning objects, e-theses?

Policies for steady state:– Uploading of content– Metadata management– Continuation funding