Supporting open access, integrating distributed research platforms, and building a research information management platform | Coughlin + Vitale | 2022-05 Code4Lib Journal

Academic libraries are often called upon by their university communities to collect, manage, and curate information about the research activity produced at their campuses. Proper research information management (RIM) can be leveraged for multiple institutional contexts, including networking, reporting activities, building faculty profiles, and supporting the reputation management of the institution. In the last ten to fifteen years the adoption and implementation of RIM infrastructure has become widespread throughout the academic world. Approaches to developing and implementing this infrastructure have varied, from commercial and open-source options to locally developed instances. Each piece of infrastructure has its own functionality, features, and metadata sources. There is no single application or data source to meet all the needs of these varying pieces of research information, many of these systems together create an ecosystem to provide for the diverse set of needs and contexts. This paper examines the systems at Pennsylvania State University that contribute to our RIM ecosystem; how and why we developed another piece of supporting infrastructure for our Open Access policy and the successes and challenges of this work.