Thesis status by department: ESB, Biology, Psychology and KSSPE

Environmental Science and Biology:

There are currently 106 theses with 23K+ downloads in this collection (12/2016). This department was another early adopter, through the efforts of Dr. Joseph Makarewicz. These theses are well written and well researched, but what is published in Digital Commons may not contain the data sets. In some cases, the data sets are only found in the print copies. I only recently became aware of this, and I think this may need to be addressed in the future, if these are to be the official records. One way to address it would be to have the data sets submitted with the theses, as supplemental files. Supplemental files may either be public (if the box is checked) or kept private. A further possibility would be to embargo the data sets for a period of time.

The submission process: ESB still binds theses, as well as submitting a digital copy with two files on CD to Digital Commons. One file contains the metadata for the submission page, the second file contains the actual thesis. It is up to the DSR to upload the thesis, and apply a one year embargo to it.

Biology:

Biology was late to the game, and in fact, resisted the idea. Their faculty are greatly concerned that having the theses in Digital Commons will result in their research being scooped before they have a chance to publish it themselves. (See 5/2015 and 7/2015 posts for more on this). They finally agreed, but only if there is an automatic one year embargo on all theses, for which one renewal could be requested. Their theses are uploaded by the student, but often with no embargo period entered, so that has to be checked on. This is a small collection, with only 23 theses, of which 18 are public at this point, and 1400 downloads.

Psychology:

Psychology started submitted theses digitally in 2015. They currently have 13 theses in the IR. Their process is for the student to submit, and I make Sara Margolin (graduate coordinator) the administrator. She looks it over, and emails me back her approval. From her email today: I'd like to be able to give you approval, because there always exists the possibility that a student will submit to Digital Commons, but not give their final thesis to me. If I have it in hand, and it's the same as the one that's submitted to you, then we know we're good. 

KSSPE:

KSSPE has gone to a synthesis project, and in fall 2017 had students start self-submitted approved projects. The presence of a signature page indicates instructor approval to post (per Cathy Houston-Wilson, 8/23/17).

Thesis status by department: Education and Human Development

Education and Human Development:

This department was definitely a pioneer at Brockport with ETDs. They have the model for best practices in terms of process here. All theses (and now capstones) are uploaded by the student. One of the required fields is the name of their Advisor. An email is sent to the advisor notifying them when the thesis is uploaded, with a link to review it. After they review the thesis, they have 3 choices. They can approve as submitted for posting, approve with a request for minor revisions, or reject it completely - which is never done. I receive a copy of the email, if it says approve for posting, I will post the thesis and update the site. If there is a request for minor revisions, the student can upload a revised copy and have it reviewed. In general, theses are not uploaded until they are at the end of the process, so most revisions will have been completed already. Sometimes when a thesis is initially uploaded, if I notice that the size of the file is unexpectedly large, I will look at it to see if I can determine what is going on. Sometimes it is in the wrong format, other times it is loaded with large illustrations. These are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

As of 12/14/2016 - the EDH collection: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/ehd_theses/ has 684 theses and capstone projects, making it our largest collection, with 641,084 downloads to date. 

Updated as of 3/25/2019: 1,209 theses - 1,598,039 downloads - largest collection

Thesis status by department: Counselor Education

Counselor Education:    

The first department to add their theses, they have never been available in print. Theses dating back to 2005 had been stored on a departmental drive awaiting a time when they could be displayed electronically. The department handles obtaining all permissions, and while initial uploads were done by the DRS, in recent years their graduate assistant has taken care of it. The collection contains 171 papers and is located at http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/edc_theses/.

In 2015, the department changed from a thesis project to a capstone project, and a new collection was created called Counselor Education Capstone. http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/edc_capstone/ . There are currently 28 papers in that collection, as of 12/13/16.

Things to know:

1. Research involving the Veterans Administration is not allowed to be published, and will be subject to takedown, if inadvertently posted. Examples include: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/edc_theses/129, http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/edc_theses/166 and http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/edc_theses/164
2. When granting new graduate assistants administrator privileges, be sure to add them to the Capstone collection, not the thesis collection.
3. Both Capstones and Theses should be gathered into the larger Thesis Collection. Filters have been set up to do this. 

Possible automated workflows to check out!

I like your term the "Texas workflow". I believe the negative feedback at UT Austin was indeed from their decision to post the files without prior knowledge from the authors. That is one reason we at Texas Tech are using it as a point of outreach, as we have had similar issues in the past and generally allow take downs upon request. Additionally, there is limited awareness about the IR on our campus, which may not be the case at UT Austin.

Here is some information from 2013 about repository management staff from Portland State and Washington State: Bjork, Karen; Isaak, David; and Vyhnanek, Kay, "The Changing Roles of Repositories: Where We Are and Where We Are Headed" (2013). Library Faculty Publications and Presentations. Paper 84.

http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/ulib_fac/84 

There may be updated information out there, but this seemed like a good summary for your questions about exact FTE. You many also want to check the library Publishing Coalition site/directory. It's not IR-specific but it may give you a feel for what institutions' staff size dedicated to 'library publishing'.

 At TTU, while there are about 4 FTE who actively have responsibility managing the IR, we do have many students who work on the digital collections (not publications necessarily). Our Digital Resources department trains students and faculty. I am assigned with outreach to faculty and students as well as making workflows user-centered. I am the primary person who deposits faculty work. I'm also working on hiring PT student (I'm in a different department).

Camille Thomas

Scholarly Communication Librarian

Texas Tech University

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Claudia Holland <chollan3@gmu.edu> wrote:

Thanks very much for sharing this info, Shilpa. The Texas workflow looks very promising. I am curious about the reference to the “negative” feedback from faculty in the presentation. Do you know if this stems from IR Managers uploading content without permissions from author, or what?

Building off this conversation, I would like to ask about staff support for maintaining an IR. How many FTE and PT staff do you (the collective “you”) have to manage your IR deposits? Do you hire students, too? If so, how many hours/week? Who provides the training and supervises these students? Does the person in charge of the IR have other regular assigned duties? Who is assigned IR outreach to faculty and students? 

I am happy to compile this information if anyone is interested and there is enough response to this query.

Thanks,

Claudia

Claudia Holland, M.A., M.L.I.S.

Head, Scholarly Communication and Copyright

Mason Publishing Group

George Mason University Libraries

4400 University Dr., MS 2FL

Fairfax, VA  22030

703-993-2544

chollan3@gmu.edu

publishing.gmu.edu

From: Shilpa Rele <shilpa.rele@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Shilpa Rele <shilpa.rele@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, November 18, 2016 at 5:57 PM
To: "scholcomm@lists.ala.org" <scholcomm@lists.ala.org>

Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Best Practices : Checking copyright for authors

Sorry, the links didn't transfer over in my earlier email - I've added them below.

Shilpa

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 2:49 PM, Shilpa Rele <shilpa.rele@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi - Until recently we followed similar practices for clearing copyright for faculty publications. Last month I read about Joy Perrin at Texas Tech on the DLF blog talk about a new workflow designed by folks at UT Austin that they are experimenting with.  We at LMU gave it a shot as well and have now begun to download faculty publication citations from Web of Science and using Google Sheets and Google Scripts for the purpose.

We’ve also been actively seeking out CVs from faculty. Once we get the CV, we’ve been adding citations to a Google sheet template that contains the scripts. We’re still working out the details of our workflow but loosely here’s what we’ve started to do: copy each citation into the first column of a Google Sheet template that contains the scripts.  In the second column, copy just the name of the publication. In the 3rd column, run a “VLOOKUP” that searches a database of contacts, information (i.e. ceased publications), and ISSNs to each journal we have ever researched as we built the IR. Then in the next column, run the Sherpa/Romeo Google Scripts based off of the ISSNs that the VLOOKUP receives. This will show the copyright permissions or contact information. Example: Brett Hoover. We track our progress  in excel sheets stored in Box because the scripts take forever to load if one edits the Google sheet too much.

In addition, we subscribe to 1Science and they’ve sent us their datasets with LMU faculty content that is openly available on the web. We have a script that downloads all the PDFs listed in the spreadsheet but we are also checking the permissions against Sherpa/Romeo since this is the first time we have received such a dataset from them.

 We make use of Illiad/Document Delivery Service to help us get copies of works that we have permissions for.

All in all, this new automated workflow has reduced our time considerably to clear copyright permissions. We use Bepress Digital Commons, so we are also exploring batch uploading tool. We are still working on documenting these workflows, so I’ll be happy to share documentation once they are ready.

If you would like further details or have suggestions for above workflows, please contact me and I’ll be happy to talk more about this.

Best,
Shilpa

Shilpa Rele | Digital Program Librarian
William H. Hannon Library | Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive MS 8200 Los Angeles CA 90045
shilpa.rele@lmu.edu | 310.338.2792
More info: Digital Library Program | Scholarly Communications LibGuide

Clear cache, refresh, incognito?

Sometimes when a change is made to a DC page, it isn't obvious just by refreshing the page. Here are some tips and tricks shared by Lauren:


Whenever styling is impacted, like when I add this customization, I take care of it ahead of time, which is why I mentioned that you’d need to refresh your browser. You might try clearing your cache or using “incognito” mode. Incognito is odd! One of my colleagues always suggests this as an alternative to clearing the cache, which I also resist. If you want another cool trick, you can also clear the cache on an individual page. To do this, click your F12 key. Then right click on the “refresh” button and select “Empty cache and hard reload.” That will just clear the cache on that one page. I use this a lot!

Calendar of events

February - Fair Use Week - plan some events to publicize what Fair Use means for Education. See: http://fairuseweek.org/resources/ for resources, including a great fair use poster.

April -
Sokol High School Literary Awards, sponsored by Friends and Foundation of the Rochester Public Library. Contact: Rebecca Fuss <Rebecca.Fuss@libraryweb.org>

Director of Programming & Outreach

Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library

115 South Avenue, Rochester NY 14604

585-428-8350
Brockport contacts the winners (with information provided by Rebecca), congratulating them and asking their permission to publish their winning entry in Digital Commons. We also send them a release form, (these documents are in the Sokol folder of the DC FC2 drive), attend the ceremony, present them with a certificate (also in DC FC2 Sokol folder) with their name, the name of their entry and the URL where it will be posted. I create the metadata record first and add the presentation after I get the release form (usually at the ceremony). Rebecca usually sends me the pdfs in the week following the ceremony.

Batch uploads using UB Box & Geolocate information & Batch Revision

Upload the files you wish to share to an open shared drive (google drive, dropbox or UB box are some examples).

Open file you wish to share, Choose: Share with people who have the link;
Advanced Settings: Allow downloads, this generates a static IP address

To add files (i.e. combine the batch upload function with the batch revise function):

To add an image to the works, you’ll use column R: fulltext_url. You mentioned you had a hard time pulling in images from an external server, but if you have one that you can use (not password protected, open access), that’s where you’d put the link to the image. You can certainly revise a row to add that link and change other cells at the same time.

Please do not touch the four grey columns on the left that you mentioned: calc_url, context_key, issue, and ctmtime. (There is a new column, as well, original_import_rownum- please feel free to delete that or leave it alone.)


Geolocate_zoom is the column I mentioned above that will make the sidebar map more usable: The default is 5, so if all of your items are in one place, you will want to update your zoom level so that the zoom is higher (up to 18). This will make your map look better.