2023… what a year it has been for the DRO (Durham Research Online) team… and as we start to wind down at the end of the year, Kelly Hetherington, Repository Officer, reflects on this year’s repository related achievements.
I’ve been on the DRO team since April 2019 and this has been the busiest year yet, with lots of changes and developments, alongside the steady stream of outputs being deposited in the repository by our hard-working academics and professional support staff.
Deposits
This year, we’ve processed 2343 new publication records that have a file attached. You can see our monthly deposit statistics on our Monthly Activity webpage – we reached our peak number of deposits in November, with 302 new records deposited with files – we hope this means that we are all getting used to our brand new repository system (more on that later)!
However, we have noticed a decline in the number of accepted manuscripts this year (in the run up to REF 2021, we had 1827 accepted manuscripts deposited in 2019 and 1438 accepted manuscripts deposits in 2022. This year we’ve had 943 so far). So, watch out for promotional work from our team next year as we would like to encourage our academics to deposit accepted manuscripts on acceptance. This will be especially helpful as we prepare for REF 2029!
Worktribe (Outputs)
After years of preparation, Worktribe Outputs was launched in early August 2023 as the brand new platform for DRO. In the run up to this, the DRO and wider Open Research team worked alongside RIS to make sure we understood how the system and our processes would work. The DRO team’s role involved producing guidance for team members and external guidance for our academics and professional services staff. You can find this guidance on our Sharepoint site.
We also migrated 77 000 outputs from the previous staff profiles and the repository to Worktribe (and you can see them all in our new repository: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/!)
The team are enjoying using the new system which is a lot more intuitive, easy to access and allows us to record much richer metadata (for example, linking grant codes and department information to your outputs is so much easier).
We have hosted several ‘Get to know Worktribe Outputs’ sessions this year and are planning on more next year – check Oracle Learning in January to sign up. If you’d like a bespoke session for your department, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at dro.admin@durham.ac.uk.
Durham University’s Research Publications Policy
Durham Research Online staff have taken a proactive role in implementing the University’s brand new Research Publications Policy, which came into force for scholarly articles on April 1st 2023.
The University’s commitment to Rights Retention is the main aim of the policy. Rights Retention means that authors and institutions retain greater rights to their scholarly articles. As part of this, accepted manuscripts of journal articles are made available on publication with a CC BY licence (with certain exceptions which are detailed in the policy). For the DRO team, on a practical level, it means we are checking all accepted journal articles on a weekly basis to see if they have been published yet, updating the metadata and making them available. You can also alert us when your output is published – just comment ‘@Library’ in the record or drop us an email at dro.admin@durham.ac.uk.
New staff members
This month we have said goodbye to Vicki Hedley, who has been the Repository Officer job share since September 2022, as she moves back to her full-time position as Customer Services Coordinator in the Bill Bryson Library. We are delighted that Martin Gleghorn, who is currently the Repository Coordinator, will now split his time between Repository Officer and Coordinator. Martin has been on the team since March 2021, and I’m sure anyone who he has supported over his (almost!) three years, will agree he will be fantastic in his new role.
This means we will also be advertising for a job share Repository Co-ordinator in 2024 – watch this space!
Top articles this year
The top three downloaded articles in the final quarter of 2023:
Number 1:
Harvey, C., Yang, R., Mueller, F., & Maclean, M. (2020). Bourdieu, strategy and the field of power. Critical Perspectives On Accounting, 73, Article 102199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2020.102199
Available on Worktribe: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1262292
This article is co-authored by Professor Frank Mueller from the Department of Accounting, Business School. It is great to see this article being used – as it is behind a paywall on the publisher webpage and the number of downloads demonstrates that people who do not have access via a subscription are still benefitting from reading it – one of the reasons we are so passionate about open access on our team!
Number 2:
Chan, T., Cheung, C., & Lee, Z. (2017). The State of Online Impulse-Buying Research: A Literature Analysis. Information and Management, 54(2), 204-217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2016.06.001
Available on Worktribe: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1336831
A 2016 article from former member of staff, Zach Lee, who worked in the Management and Marketing Department in Business School is still relevant, popular and being accessed by users without a publisher paywall.
Number 3:
Girdwood, M. (2021). Modernism and the Choreographic Imagination: Salome’s Dance after 1890. Edinburgh University Press
This is an open access book by Megan Girdwood from the English Department, which is also available on Worktribe: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1120586
Overall, outputs in our repository had 442,685 views in the final quarter of 2023 and 85,822 downloads – we think this demonstrates that the job that we are doing is definitely worthwhile!
Finally…
We would like to thank all of our Durham academics and Professional Support Staff for engaging with us this year. We look forward to working with you in 2024!
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