Report on the University Repository Survey, October-November 2010

"The University Repository is now in its fifth year of operation. The Repository contains well over 8,000 items including over 250 PhD theses and over 3,000 peer reviewed journal articles.... November 2010 saw a record number of full text open access downloads from the Repository, 9,122. Downloads have been rising steadily over the past year to 62,694.... There is still work to do, to date only 29% of the Repository is available as full text and only 20% of items are available on open access, this figure rises to 35% of content published since 2008 on open access....88% of those who responded were in favour of the principles of Open Access and 86% were in favour of adding their research to an Open Access Repository. This compares to only 29% of content which is available in full text in the University Repository.... A further 72% were in favour of publishing in open access journals, however, there were some comments regarding concerns over peer review and impact factor of open access journals.... It was reassuring that 96% of respondents had heard of the University Repository and 75% were currently making the metadata of their research available in the Repository as a minimum.... It is clear that there is still some misunderstanding about the copyright implications of adding research to the Repository, in fact all items can be added to the Repository as metadata and the majority can be added in full text on open access....27% of replies stated that they self deposited items into the Repository. 62% did not....74% of those who responded thought that copyright should stay with the author, employer or funding council and of those who said ‘other’, the majority thought that copyright should be shared. However, 25% did not read the copyright transfer agreement which usually transfers all copyright to the publisher....81% stated that they would be prepared to deposit the author version in the Repository. It is hoped that the very positive response to this final question will help to increase the amount of open access research available in the Repository and that this will help to show the public impact of the University’s research in future years...."