PIDs are unique alphanumeric codes assigned to digital objects, such as research papers, datasets, and other academic resources. Unlike URLs, which can change over time, PIDs are designed to remain constant. This permanence makes them invaluable for citation, data management, and the integrity research outputs. Examples include Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for articles and datasets, ORCID IDs for researchers, and International Standard Name Identifiers (ISNIs) for authors and contributors.
Why are PIDs Useful?
1. Stability and Reliability: PIDs ensure that digital resources can be reliably located over time; a DOI will always direct users to the current location of an article, even if the website changes or the article is moved. This stability is crucial for the continuity of academic citations.
2. Enhanced Discoverability: PIDs enable more efficient searching and retrieval of academic resources. Search engines and databases use PIDs to link related works which enables ’citation chasing’, particularly in Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar.
3. Efficient Data Management: PIDs help libraries manage data, providing a consistent and standardized method of identification. This consistency aids in cataloguing, archiving, sharing data and the curation of data made in preparation for REF submission.
4. Improved Attribution and Recognition: ORCID IDs provide a unique identifier for researchers, ensuring proper attribution of their work. This helps in building a researcher’s professional profile and assists the tracking contributions and collaborations accurately.
Resources for Future Research
For those interested in exploring PIDs further, there are numerous resources available:
1. ORCID (orcid.org): ORCID provides unique identifiers for researchers, facilitating proper attribution and reducing the risk of name ambiguities.
2. DOI System (doi.org): The DOI system offers detailed information on how DOIs work and how they can be used to identify various types of digital content.
3. ISNI (isni.org): ISNI offers identifiers for individuals and organizations involved in creative activities, including researchers, authors, and institutions.
4.Jisc (jisc.ac.uk): Jisc provides a wealth of resources and support for the UK higher education sector, including information on the implementation and benefits of PIDs in scholarly communications.
5. DataCite (datacite.org): DataCite focuses on the assignment and management of DOIs for research data, supporting data sharing and citation.
PIDs are more than just technical tools—they underpin the integrity, reliability, and discoverability of research outputs. As the HE sector in the UK continues to embrace digital transformation, the role of PIDs will only become more critical. By understanding and leveraging PIDs, research libraries can enhance their support for academic research.
On 6 November 2023, the University launched a new repository system, Figshare. As Lincoln approaches its first anniversary with Figshare, the Research Data and Systems team would like to share some reflections on the progress and usage of the platform since its introduction.
Since the launch of the new repository, Figshare data confirms that records deposited by Lincoln authors have received a total of over 2.1 million views. Available files have been downloaded over 742,809 times. The most popularly viewed item types are journal contributions, with 1.2 million views, and conference contributions, with 337,717 views.
Item type
View count (correct as of 17/10/2024)
Journal contribution
1,247,327
Conference contribution
337,717
Book chapter
198,200
Book
116,501
Thesis
60,737
Media
60,827
Report
53,391
Online resource
37,661
Figure
28,776
Dataset
13,888
A full overview of view counts per item type for the University’s repository
The team are pleased to report that Lincoln research has been viewed all over the world. The University’s repository was most commonly accessed by users in the United States, France, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Ireland, and Singapore. Research tagged with the following JACS Codes was viewed by the most users respectively: C800—Psychology, I100—Computer Science, L300—Sociology, N100—Business Studies and A300—Clinical Medicine.
Country
View count (correct as of 17/10/2024)
United States
1,675,266
France
320,237
United Kingdom
40,589
Indonesia
31,905
Ireland
29,334
Singapore
14,264
Japan
6,276
Germany
5,497
Australia
4,673
India
2,408
China
2,078
Canada
1,992
Finland
1,977
Netherlands
1,715
Denmark
1,592
Russia
1,515
South Korea
1,350
Sweden
1,248
Brazil
1,163
Turkey
1,138
Philippines
1,125
Lithuania
1,113
Italy
943
An overview of international access data for our University’s repository
In the last six months alone, the Repository Team have processed 1,302 deposits (roughly 54 items weekly) from colleagues across the institution. Deposits were primarily comprised of journal contributions (62%); however, the team are excited to continue embracing data archiving, especially in relation to the funding landscape, where a growing number of bodies mandate open data requirements in line with the terms of their grants.
As of October 2024, JISCs tool Sherpa Juliet (which archives funder’s open access requirements) revealed that 55 funders require data archiving, whilst a further 33 encourage this. Data archiving can also offer researcher benefits, with an article published by PLOS ONEfinding an association between articles that include statements that link to data in a repositoryandup to 25.36% (± 1.07%) higher citation impact on average, using a citation prediction model.
The data, gathered by Matthew Goddard (Professor of Population and Evolutionary Biology at the University), Rory Jones (a Lincoln PhD student), Michelle Fountain and Paul Eady, underpins this article, published open access in Springer’s Scientific Reports. The output explores ways to control agricultural pests without the use of chemical pesticides. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and the University of Lincoln funded this project, in collaboration with NIAB-EMR. According to Springer Nature’s Altmetric data, the open access article has been accessed 2530 times, cited on 17 occasions and is in the 88th percentile of the 511,613 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals.
As our previous system did not provide usage data, we are unable to tell how often the files were accessed historically. However, we hope that Figshare’s Usage Metrics and grant database (powered by Dimensions) offers colleagues across the institution an exciting opportunity to track the visibility and dissemination of their items published on the repository.
Datasets are not the only outputs which benefit from repository dissemination. Some of the most viewed items on the University’s Figshare repository are theses.
Alison has kindly granted permission for us to spotlight her thesis, adding that opportunities have arisen as a result of the thesis being available on the repository. Since the record was made live on the repository, Dr Raby was asked to lead a webinar at Bristol University, alongside being invited as a guest on a podcast, which is being recorded this month. Alison is also co-authoring a second edition of a seminal book on personal tutoring and has seen her thesis’ recommendations used in staff training for personal tutoring at another institution.
If you are interested in adding your thesis to the repository, please complete this MS Form, and a member of the team will upload this on your behalf.
Over the next year, the team will be continuing to develop additional resources for Figshare users as well as including the development of institutional guidance for the deposit of practice-led, non-traditional, and multi-component research. This will be led by feedback from a new Non-Traditional Research Outputs Working Group (NTROWG). The details of this group, including information on how to participate, will be circulated by the end of 2024.
If you would like to know more about Figshare, please visit the Repository Help Blog, which contains a suite of resources, including deposit guidance for both routes (“Deposit Research” and “Deposit Data”) and FAQs.
This contribution was authored by Jade King, Research Repository and Research Data Officer.
There are so many different open access policies but one that is close to my heart is the REF (Research Excellence Framework) Open Access Policy.
The policy was introduced for the first time for the REF2021 submission. The underpinning ethos is that the four UK HE funding bodies (Research England, Scottish Funding Council, Commission for Tertiary Education and Research and Department for the Economy Northern Ireland) believe that the outputs from publicly funded research should be freely accessible and widely available. What’s the point in carrying out all that lovely research if it’s difficult for people to read about it?!
The intention of the policy was to set minimum requirements for open access, whilst at the same time encouraging researchers and HEIs to develop a culture and environment that goes beyond this. For the REF2021 submission the policy considered all journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) published after 1st April 2016 to be ‘in scope’.
The policy states that ‘outputs should be deposited, discoverable, and free to read, download and search within, by anyone with an internet connection’. Although, the gold open access route (accessible via the University’s Transitional Agreements or the payment of an Article Processing Charge) is a route to REF compliance, authors can also meet the requirements without incurring a cost. The free route to open access is available through the deposit of the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) on an approved repository (Figshare is fine). For an output to be considered compliant, the AAM must be deposited within 12 weeks of the output being accepted for publication by the journal/publisher. There were exceptions to the policy, but REF2021 required that no more than 5% of a unit of assessment’s outputs were non-compliant. In the case of the University’s submission this amounted to no more than one or two outputs per unit. This route, making your accepted manuscript available on a repository, instead of paying gold open access charges, is called green open access.
The repository team has lots of resources available to support staff throughout the deposit process, as it is essential that our outputs comply with the policy. It would be devastating to have to exclude a really strong output from the REF submission because it is not compliant with the REF’s Open Access Policy.
As we move into REF2029, the policy has undergone review; we are expecting further details to be launched before Christmas. Whilst we don’t know the exact rules yet we do know a few things.
Firstly, despite rumblings earlier in the REF cycle that the policy would be extended to longform publications (books, monographs etc.) it has been decided that this change won’t be implemented until the start of the next REF cycle (is it too early to mention REF2035?). The earliest date that changes surrounding longform publications will take effect from is the 1st January 2029.
Any other updates to the policy will be implemented no earlier than 1st January 2026, which allows HEIs time to implement the new changes (whatever they may be). It’s a shame that the release of the new policy hasn’t coincided with International Open Access Week but rest assured that whenever the policy arrives, we will pour over it and share all the relevant details with you. In the meantime, please make sure you’re still complying with the REF2021 policy. If you need any advice or guidance, please contact the Repository Team (repository@lincoln.ac.uk) and we’ll be happy to help.
This contribution was authored by Alison Wilson, Deputy Head of Research & Industrial Partnerships.
Open Access in academic publishing took off at the start of the century, with pioneers of the OA movement championing the 2002 “Budapest Open Access Initiative”whichembraced new technology to argue for free and open access to scholarly content as an “unprecedented public good”. In this vein, OA can be seen as a social movement built on a communitarian ethic, where scholarly output is a public resource. This openness was championed as “levelling the playing field between richer and poorer institutions [and] countries”, speeding up the creation of knowledge, and freeing scholarly content from the cage of an exclusive academic audience.
In reality, movement towards this utopian goal was stifled by the economics of academic publishing which had been operating as a ‘big business’ since the 1980s, typified by “Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon press which was an early mover…recognising that the expansion of university research would lead to an expansion in the demand for the dissemination for results”. The publishing industry – now dominated by a ‘big five’ of Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Springer Nature, and SAGE – grip of industry through ownership of prestigious ‘high impact’ journal titles (the ones all academics want to publish in) giving them an effective monopoly within the market. This ownership ensures that the mainstream publishers, with current profit margins of 40%, are well placed to monetise government and funder OA mandates that have become a feature within the last decade. Within the UK, this has taken shape with the REF and UKRI open access policies as a response to “Plan S” – a European wide initiative to allow immediate access to research outputs without embargo. Initially, publishers charged libraries high fees for subscription content whilst simultaneously demanding article processing charges (APCs) from institutions, academics, and research funders who wanted (or needed to) publish their outputs open access. This process, known as “double dipping”, opened up a lucrative revenue stream for publishing, monetising the societal push towards open content. The politics of OA publishing continues to evolve, with sector action to temper the excesses of double dipping through “transformative agreements” (TAs) whereby universities pay a single fee to cover both read and publisher costs. In the UK, TAs are negotiated by JISC with individual publishers, often in protracted and complex negotiations where taxpayer “value for money” is pitted against profit margins. As a consequence, TA’s can be seen as complex and opaque financial products, couched in corporate language with a design to protect financial self-interest.
Seen this way, the current state of OA publishing, and the debates that surround it, feel more like a commercial neo-liberal economic debate integrated within an existing paradigm that reduces to the profit margins of publishing sector, rather than an exploration of the societal benefit that motivated the OA movement, that is, as a benefit that places communities (academic and further afield) as the centre of concern.
As librarians we talk about open access (OA) a lot — it’s seen as a core competency within librarianship and taught in library related postgraduate courses. Within academia, however, it may be treated within indifference, ambivalence, and occasional hostility. This is often because the goals and benefits of OA are not often understood by the academic community, with academics burdened by confusing REF and funder mandates.
In the spirit of open access week’s theme – ‘Community over Commercialization’ – this blog post looks at five benefits that accrue from open access publishing.
1. Visibility and Impact
Open access publishing increases the visibility of research. Traditional subscription-based journals limit access to those who can afford the high subscription fees, which restricts access to a small, privileged groups. Open access articles, by contrast, are freely available, leading to higher citation rates and greater impact, as more researchers, practitioners, and policymakers read and build upon research outputs.
2. Accelerated Discovery and Innovation
Open access accelerates discovery and innovation. When researchers have unrestricted access to outputs, they can quickly identify gaps in knowledge, replicate studies, and develop new hypotheses. The accelerated dissemination is most impactful in medicine and technology where there is high need for recent research.
3. Collaboration
Open access facilitates collaboration among researchers across disciplines and countries. Researchers from developing countries, who may not have the financial resources to subscribe to expensive journals, have informational equity with colleagues in developed economies. This ‘democratisation’ of knowledge creates an inclusive community and maximises scope for innovation.
4. Public Good
Open access benefits the general public by providing access to scientific research that would otherwise be unavailable. This accessibility allows members of the public including educators and students to engage with the latest research, increasing decision-making and increase community engagement.
5. Preservation
Institutional and subject and repositories often provide long-term preservation of research outputs, helping preserve knowledge over time. Repositories use standardized formats and metadata, making it easier to archive and retrieve research articles. This preservation is crucial for maintaining the integrity and continuity of the scientific record.
These benefits provide a flavour of OA’s importance outside the tight remit of funder and REF mandates that have come to dominate the scholarly communications landscape, shifting emphasis from commercialisation and compliance to community and public good. None of these benefits, however, oppose rules governing OA compliance. Instead, by highlighting the benefits OA, they strengthen the justification for mandates, providing evidential reasons stretching beyond ‘tick boxing’. This wider societal benefit should be championed and celebrated.
Open Access (OA) refers to the practice of making scholarly research freely available online. This approach allows research outputs, including journal articles and books, to be accessed, downloaded, shared, printed, and used without any financial, legal, or technical restrictions. The primary goal of OA is to eliminate the paywalls that restrict access to academic research, thereby democratising knowledge and fostering greater collaboration and innovation across disciplines and sectors.
International Open Access Week is an annual global event which aims to promote and celebrate OA. When looking into the history of the event, I was surprised to find out that its origins date back to 2007 when a single day event was organised in the US by Students for Free Culture and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. It expanded to become a week-long event, celebrated globally, and from 2012, themes for the week have been selected, including ‘Open for Collaboration’ (2015), ‘Open For Whom: Equity in Open Knowledge’ (2019) and ‘Open for Climate Justice’ (2022). This year’s theme will be ‘Community over Commercialisation’, in growing recognition of the need to prioritise approaches to open scholarship that best serve the interests of both the public and the academic community.
Many institutions mark International Open Access Week by organising events and activities, including workshops, webinars and round tables, which aim to raise awareness and explore different aspects of OA such as open data and the beneficial impacts of OA. Alternatively some people bake OA cakes! Organisations and institutions have also used this time to announce new OA policies or initiatives associated with OA. For example, during OA week back in 2011 the Royal Society announced that they would release the digitised backfiles (from 1665-1941) of their archives. It was also this time last year that our new repository at Lincoln was launched.
There are a number of events being held across the globe to celebrate this year’s theme, ‘Community over Commercialisation’, many of which are online and open to all to take part in. You can keep up-to-date on social media by using the official hastag #OAweek. We are also celebrating International Open Access Week here at the University of Lincoln. Building on the success of last year’s Open Access poster conference organised by Research and Enterprise, the department will be holding an Open Access Showcase. Entries will be displayed in the Freezone, UL001, located at the front of the University Library, from Monday 21 October. Please do come along to find out more about OA practices across our institution or to chat to the Repository Team during their drop-in session on Wednesday 23 October, between 11:30 and 4:30! There will also be some online webinars which will explore different aspects of OA, and keep an eye on the blog pages too for more posts on Open Access. Maybe you could mark International Open Access Week by coming along to one of the events of even baking a cake!
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