Existing School RAE Data
Some Schools have already run or plan to run mock RAE exercises to gather lists of publications and measures of esteem for staff members. Where such publication data already exists, our intention is to import it – despite the variety of formats – as the initial input into the RAE Publications Repository. We will be able to load data automatically. After the import it will need to be modified and extended to fulfil the criteria set down by the Funding Councils. Some data may also need to be tidied before importing.
All Schools will be provided with a template to utilise when collecting publication data so that it can be imported into the RAE Publications Repository. Data can also be added directly into the repository through a user interface.
Application Scope
The repository will hold metadata about each publication, including the title of the journal or book; publisher; list of authors; ISSN or ISBN; date of publication; author affiliation, etc. It will also hold, where possible, a link to the full text copy of the publication as a PDF file. is intended that wherever possible, all publications intended for the RAE Publications Repository will initially be submitted to the Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) which is the University’s institutional repository, and which allows the full-text to be freely accessible on the internet, on condition that copyright permits this form of dissemination in addition to normal journal publication. The RAE Publications Repository will scan ERA to retrieve articles for staff members. ERA is already operational and publications can currently be submitted there in preparation for the RAE. Submission to ERA is not limited to the publications which will be selected for the RAE; the Library encourages academic staff to consider submitting all of their research publications to ERA, and a selection can then be made from these for the RAE submission. This selection can be continuously modified until the RAE submission date to the Funding Councils.
The repository will not limit the number of publications which can be submitted against a staff member. All publications between the RAE submission dates can be added to the repository, but the number which can be selected for the RAE will be according to the RAE 2008 guidelines, which currently state that a maximum of four publications can be submitted per staff member.
The RAE Publications Repository will be linked to the Planning Section's data warehouse which is holding data about staff, students and funding for the RAE forms RA0, RA1, RA3, RA4 and RA5. This will provide the publications repository with information on which staff members are being submitted, their staff numbers, Schools, Units of Assessment and Research Groups. The user levels and permissions setup for the MIS repository will also be used as the permission levels for the publications repository.
Standard reports will be created which will list submitted staff members by College, School, Research Group or Unit of Assessment, showing their publications. The reports will be user configurable to show the level of information requested, though users will not be able to see reports for Schools and staff members for which they do not have the relevant permissions. There will also be statistical reports, showing the total number of staff members being submitted to a panel, the total number of publications, etc.
Users
The RAE Publications Repository will have different permission levels for users, so that they will be restricted to be able either only to view, or both to view and edit information. Users will also be restricted to their own School or College data, with only certain high level users being able to view all data. Only certain users will be privileged to select the publications which will be submitted to the Funding Councils.
Risks
the Funding Councils have not yet clarified how the RAE panels will accept submissions. During the last RAE process they only accepted the publisher-authenticated and typeset version [1]. This time we need to know if they will accept a pre-copy-edited, author-produced PDF of an article which has been accepted for publication following peer review [2]. Both versions [1] and [2] have identical academic content - the difference is in presentation only. This distinction is important because generally speaking version [1] cannot be included in ERA, whereas version [2] can be. Depending on the panel's recommendations it is likely we will have three possible scenarios:
i) Scenario A - the RAE panel will only accept the publisher-authenticated copy [1]. If this scenario occurs virtually no RAE material can be stored in ERA because of copyright restrictions placed upon the material by publishers. However, we will still use the RAE Publications Repository to store the bibliographic citations, with links to full-text papers held in published ejournals wherever possible.
ii) Scenario B - the RAE panel will accept both versions [1] and [2]. If this scenario occurs then most of the RAE material can be stored in ERA and selected for the RAE Publications Repository.
iii) Scenario C - publishers are persuaded to allow PDFs of their published journal articles to be deposited in RAE publication repositories on a time-limited basis only, for the purposes of the RAE exercise. This option is currently being explored by the Funding Councils. If this proposal is granted, then again, most of the RAE material can be stored in our Publications Repository, though not in ERA.
Obtaining the Publications
Although Schools have lists of publications, they do not necessarily have the full text versions of these publications. Publisher-authenticated publications can be obtained from EUL if the University has an institutional subscription to the journal, and if the publisher permits the deposit of its PDFs in institutional repositories (the Library’s E-Resources team can advise on publisher policies, which can also be viewed via the SHERPA Romeo service). Author-produced PDF publications should be collected directly from the academic author. In both cases they probably will need to be collected by the Schools themselves. They can then be submitted into ERA by self-archiving or using the mediated deposit service (ERA.deposit@ed.ac.uk).
For further information please contact:
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 ERA |
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