LSE Research OnlineLSE Research Online FAQ

1. How do I use LSE Research Online?

Please click here for the User Guide.

2. What is LSE Research Online?

an online, open access collection of publications by LSE researchers
"a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution."[1] (Lynch, 2003)

3. What does LSE Research Online contain?

articles in refereed journals

accepted versions
submitted versions

articles in un-refereed journals
books
book chapters
discussion and working papers
conference material
theses
forthcoming publications

4. Why set up an online open access repository?

to provide a central collection of LSE research in one place on the web
to provide a search mechanism for locating specific research by subject, keyword, LSE department or research centre, author or title
to increase the visibility and impact of LSE research [2]
to offer cross-searching with repositories at other universities in the UK and globally
to preserve LSE research papers for the future
to reduce the barriers faced by researchers across the world, by making LSE research freely available
to assist the efficient management of RAE submissions
to provide easy access to information for the many journalists who enquire about LSE research
to follow the House of Commons Science & Technology Select Committee's recommendation that all UK higher education institutions establish institutional repositories on which their published output can be stored and from which it can be read, free of charge, online... [3]

5. How strongly does LSE endorse the repository?

In June 2008 the Academic Board agreed that:

all LSE research outputs (subject to an opt out by authors in cases where commercial or academic considerations make inclusion inappropriate) will be entered into LSE Research Online.
LSE Research Online is made as useful as possible by the inclusion of abstracts and electronic links to journal articles or publishers' websites.
authors will be encouraged to provide full-text deposits of journal articles in pre-publication form, clearly labelled as such, alongside references to publications.

6. Why should my work be in LSE Research Online?

research papers posted on departmental or personal websites may be retrieved using a search engine, but they are more likely to be retrieved and have a higher ranking if they have high quality metadata (bibliographic description of the item) attached. higher ranking and increased visibility of works results in:

increased citations to work
increased speed of certification (ie public claim of ownership) of work
better communication with other researchers

time saving, especially for creation of bibliographies or details for CV's
the repository will create a central archive of LSE research output, preserve it and make it accessible in the long term. This cannot be achieved by departmental or personal websites.
usage/download statistics
inclusion of links to associated materials, data, audio-visual materials, author's professional/personal home page
links to cited references

7. What is LSE Research Online not?

an alternative to publishing in scholarly journals
an open access journal - see the Directory of Open Access Journals at http://www.doaj.org for more information on these
attempting to play the same role as a peer-reviewed journal
likely to increase plagiarism. A huge proportion of research materials is already available electronically. Open access allows instances of plagiarism to be checked more easily.

8. Who is managing LSE Research Online?

LSE Library, reporting annually to the Research Committee.
we have taken advice from interested parties within LSE and inspiration from examples of best practice across the world.
library staff managing the repository are information professionals with experience of working with researchers and of creating high quality catalogue and index records.

9. How is material added to LSE Research Online?

library staff will complete bibliographic details and add the full text
academic staff are welcome to add their own papers. Bibliographic details will be checked by Library staff before a paper is made publicly available.

10. How much work do researchers need to do?

Very little! Library staff work to make the deposit process as seamless as possible. The responsibilities of researchers are as follows:

the author should sign the Deposit Agreement. This gives the Library permission to store, copy and manipulate documents in order to ensure that they can be preserved and made freely available in the future. The agreement is non-exclusive, and the depositor does not give away any of their rights to the repository.
if a research output or publication has one or more co-authors, get their agreement to the deposit in the repository.

Researchers also must conform to the following:

the work should be original
the author should not deposit works where copyright or other rights may be infringed

11. What are the responsibilities of the Library?

The Library will ensure that LSE Research Online:

is well maintained
remains fully searchable and complies with international standards
complies with publishers' copyright policies

12. What about copyright?

publications are covered by copyright law and clear conditions of use are displayed on the web pages. Readers will have no more rights for copying and downloading than in any other publication readers are made aware that documents may be protected by both foreign and UK copyright, and may not be downloaded for any commercial purpose
the Library is working with the many publishers who now permit the archiving of articles in institutional repositories, without requiring a specific request to be made
authors are increasingly scrutinising copyright transfer agreements and choosing to retain copyright. It is now common for authors to license the publisher to publish their work, rather than signing away their copyright
find out your publisher's position using the RoMEO website http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php or by checking the agreement you signed. The Library will help if you are not sure

13. What version of my work will LSE Research Online contain?

Authors are encouraged to deposit work in pre-publication form, clearly labelled as such, alongside web references to publications. This will ensure your work is accessible to all but still closely associated with the publication that contains the published version. Where available LSE Research Online contains links to an article's DOI (http://www.doi.org/) and the homepage of the journal or publisher website, ensuring the published version is clearly identified to users of the repository.

For full guidance on versions for authors, please see the VERSIONS toolkit for researchers.

14. What is the future of LSE Research Online?

Library staff, in association with the SHERPA project nationally, are investigating the optimum methods for long term preservation. In the digital environment this is a complex issue and one which publishers are not formally addressing. We feel it is important that LSE research output remains highly visible and accessible in the long term.

15. Which other UK institutions already have a similar repository?

* Bath * Birkbeck * Birmingham * Bristol * British Library * Cambridge * Cranfield * Durham * Edinburgh * Glasgow * Imperial * King's College London * Leeds * Newcastle * Nottingham * Open University * Oxford * Portsmouth * Royal Holloway * St Andrews * Sheffield * SOAS * Southampton * UCL * York

16. Contacts

General enquiries and to deposit your research: LSE Research Online lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk	Frances Shipsey eServices Librarian f.m.shipsey@lse.ac.uk
Michelle Blake Project Officer (eServices) m.blake@lse.ac.uk	Chris Brown ePrints Assistant lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk
Your department's Liaison Librarian http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/atozservices.htm

17. Glossary:

Authorization
A means whereby the user can prove who they are, for example, a bona fide member of LSE.

Cross-searching
Searching across two or more sources such as databases at the same time with a single search.

Institutional repository
An open access archive, maintained by the institution and usually containing items resulting from research at that institution.

Metadata
Data describing data. A library catalogue is an example of metadata records about books and so on.

Open access
Made available via the world wide web to anyone with internet access. No barriers to access such as a password or payment. An open access repository is not the same as an open access journal.

Version Glossary

Draft
Early version circulated as work in progress

Submitted Version
The version that has been submitted to a journal for peer review

Accepted Version
The author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version

Published Version
The publisher-created published version

Updated Version
A version updated since publication

[1] Lynch, Clifford, (2003). Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age. ARL (Association of Research Libraries), Bimonthly Report 226, February 2003. Available at http://www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html [Accessed 10.12.04]

[2] A growing body of evidence demonstrates that work that is freely available is cited more frequently and also has greater impact. For example the article by Antelman, K., (2004). Do open-access articles have a greater research impact? College and Research Libraries. September. pp. 372 - 382 concludes that "this study indicates that, across a variety of disciplines, open-access articles have a greater research impact than articles that are not freely available.

[3] Great Britain (2004) House of Commons Science & Technology Select Committee. Tenth Report. 2003-2004 session. Scientific publications: Free for all? Available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/cmsctech.htm [Accessed 10.12.04]

Contact Information

Any correspondence concerning this specific archive should be sent to the E Services Librarian (LSEResearchOnline@lse.ac.uk).

About this software

This site is powered by EPrints 3, free software developed by the University of Southampton.

Other institutions are invited (and encouraged) to set up their own open archives for author self-archiving, using the freely-distributable GNU EPrints software used at this site.

For more information see eprints.org and software.eprints.org

Technologies employed and supported:

Powered by: MySQL, Apache Webserver, PERL, mod_perl, XML, DOM, ParaCite, GNU EPrints.

Supports: Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, VLit Transclusions, Valid XHTML, Valid CSS.

Part of: The GNU Project.