Open Scholarship and research reporting in tandem : creating more value

Abstract

Paper presented as part of the “African Digital Scholarship & Curation Conference”, 12-14 May 2009, CSIR Conference Centre, Pretoria, South Africa. PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the collaboration between the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Open Scholarship Office, housed in the Department of Library Services, and the Department of Research and Innovation Support, which resulted in the successful linking of the research articles in the institutional repository UPSpace with the 2007 annual research report.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: This is a narrative account of the development of the openUP collection as well as a description of the UP Research Information System (RIS) and the current relationship between the Open Scholarship Office and the Department of Research and Innovation Support.

FINDINGS: The shared goals (of enhancing UP research outputs) of the two departments resulted in a new co-operative strategy that proved to be mutually beneficial. The Department of Research and Innovation Support provided the Open Scholarship Office with a complete record of the institution’s research output in a specific academic year. The Open Scholarship Office supplied URL links to the articles already submitted to UPSpace and also identified a total of 21 articles, which were not initially captured on the RIS by the relevant departments. As a result, additional funding was awarded to the University by the Department of Education (DoE).

ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: UP is the first institution of higher learning in Africa to achieve this milestone. This new collaborative effort between the Open Scholarship Office and the Department of Research and Innovation Support created value in enhancing the research report and making the UP research more visible.