Insights: Vol. 27 Issue 1: p. 96

"On a normal workday, my two cats wake me up at around 7:00 am, and 40 minutes later I set off for work. Few people are fortunate enough to be able to take a brisk ten-minute walk to work, at the same time enjoying the beautiful surroundings. But I am lucky to live very close to Stellenbosch University, where I work as an open scholarship manager in the Library and Information Service. Stellenbosch is the top research university on the African continent and is situated in the quaint little town of Stellenbosch in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. It is surrounded by beautiful mountains, wine lands and the ocean within driving distance. Being a university within a historic town, there is always a buzz – mainly because of the mixture of locals, students and tourists from all over the world who enjoy visiting, studying or settling here. Once I arrive on campus, my first stop is Café G.O.1 in the ‘Neelsie’ Student Centre, for one of the best coffees in town. Arriving at my desk, I then attend to the most urgent e-mails. Since our next graduation period has been scheduled for April 2014, now is a busy time with an increase in questions from students and supervisors, for example on how to submit their theses or dissertations to SUNScholar (we use DSpace software), the open access (OA) and full-text research repository of Stellenbosch University. The repository management component of my job involves making the research output of our University as visible as possible, so that others all over the world can benefit from it and cite it, which will in the end also impact on the research profile of our University. Since we recently upgraded to a new version of DSpace, I need to support the metadata editors quite a bit. Assisted by our systems administrator, this is fortunately not a problem. My job also includes digitally preserving our most important asset – our research – for years to come so that it will be accessible to future generations ... As this is a Monday morning, I meet with my two assistants at 10:00 to discuss our plans for the week. We identify problems, do risk assessments, identify possible projects and prioritize. The repository assistant mainly focuses on submitting research articles made available by academics for submission to SUNScholar. The open access journals assistant focuses on digitizing retrospective theses and dissertations (previously available in print only), retrospective journal articles previously available in print only, and also on customizing the look and feel of OA journals we host, using Open Journals Systems (OJS). The service through which we host OA journals is referred to as SUNJournals, and the process involves setting up the journal, providing training and support, requesting eISSNs and registering digital object identifiers (DOIs). As journal manager for the hosted journals I am constantly on the lookout for ways to increase the visibility of the 16 hosted journals. Networking with the SA Department of Higher Education and Training, the Academy of Science of South Africa and other higher education institutions in our country is very important as we cannot function in isolation ..."