Tony Ferguson – University Librarian, University of Hong Kong
David Palmer –Systems Librarian,University of Hong Kong
Institutional repositories (IR) were initiated in recent years in recognition of the need for an alternative method of publishing and knowledge dissemination. The debate continues on whether articles in open access (OA) actually create more discovery, and citations on those articles. However in the discussion that follows, this appears to be yesterday’s battlefield. Proponents of IRs now find that by aligning the goals of the IR with those of the underlying institution, there is no more battle to be fought. At HKU, the Senior Management Team has recently re-articulated the institution’s mission and vision statements, to focus on three themes; 1) Teaching & Learning, 2) Research, and 3) Knowledge Exchange (KE). The HKU definition of KE includes the act of making HKU generated knowledge and skill sets accessible to business, government and the community.
The IR at HKU, the HKU Scholars Hub, is now well positioned to support these three areas, as well as measure quantitatively and qualitatively, how much work is done in these areas. The Hub collects and provides OA on teaching & learning objects, and the published & grey literature. It provides metrics on downloads, and imports citation counts from Scopus and Web of Science. It provides these metrics by article or object, and cumulates for each author. The Hub was recently enhanced to show “HKU Author Pages” with these metrics for each author, as well as fields to show in which areas an author can undertake contract research, in which areas an author can act as a spokesperson to the media, etc. With these re-articulated three themes, and the recent enhancements to the Hub, it has now become a star player, indeed “mission-critical”, in the University’s strategy for research distribution, or, KE. Increased funding and policy mandates for research deposit are correspondingly imminent.
Presentation [ PPT ]
