Notes for the January 2022 Introductory Session to ORO

1. Introduction to Open Research Online (ORO): The OU's research
publications repository
What is ORO trying to do? ORO attempts to be a complete record of research
publications by OU researchers
OU Researchers | Slide
ORO attempts to collectresearch authored predominantlyby the OU researchcommunity –
whetherthey be centrally contracted research staffor Postgraduate researchers. They are our
core audience. We also collectresearch from visitingresearchstaff and emeritusstaff.
We will also collectresearch from other centrallycontracted staff (e.g.publicationsfrom research
that goesin in Learnerand DiscoveryServices) and we will representresearchfrom ALs where
there is a centrallycontracted OU co-author. But ifthe AL is the sole OU affiliatedauthorwe don’t
routinelycollectit – that maychange!
Publications | Slide
HistoricallyORO was quite restrictive and just intendedto holdjournal articles (thisis because
these were the typesof publicationsthat we thought we could make open access.
But the demands ofRAE and REF exercisesmeantthat ORO neededtobecome a central dataset of
all the OU’s research publications,notjust a subsetthat were ripe for making open access. This
meant we neededto capture articles,books and book chapters, editedbooks,conference
proceedingsetc. In short, all publicationsthat might fall in the REF radar.
But, I wouldargue, a real benefitofa an institutional repositoryis that ability to provide a
platform for all those outputs from research that don’t fit neatlyinto traditional modesof
scholarly communication,e.g.reports, presentationsand posters,reports and theses. So ORO
doesn’tjust collectwhat may be REFable,rather it should collectanything that may be useful to
an interestedreader.
For example,we have collectedexemplartaughtstudent researchthat providesexistingand
prospective students with examplesofresearchprojects for theirmodules.
Deposit | Slide
How do the publicationsget onto ORO? We have a mixedmodel:
 Selfdeposit– this is historicallythe way everythinggot addedto ORO, where the co-
author or surrogate added the entry to ORO themselves.
 Automated deposit– for good reasons, people weren’taddingthingsto ORO and we
realisedwe weren’tcapturing everything in ORO we should. So we use servicesthat
aggregate publisherand CrossReffeedstogather publicationsautomatically.
ORO | Slide
So ORO collectsall this informationand displaysin hopefullyuseful ways to a user of the
repository. Thisis an institutional website thatcan be viewedglobally.
We can search or browse ORO in various ways e.g.by author, academic unit,research groupings
etc. We can visitthe website and,I hope,usefullynavigate it. And that’s important but
fundamentallywe organise this data so it can be reused outside of ORO.

2. People Profiles | Slide
OK, so one ofthe ways ORO data isused isin the People Profile Pages. Each OU researcherhas an
institutional profile page,and on that page there is a tab for publications. That publicationspage
is dynamicallyfedfrom ORO, so whateveris in ORO is also on the publicationstab on the people
profile page. And ifyou click on the publicationinthe person profile youwill end up inORO.
Research Groupings | Slide
Publicationscan be tagged with a research group or a research centre and these can be viewedon
the ORO webpages. This data can be pulledusingRSS feedsto the research groupingsown
website.
EThOS | Slide
EThOS is the British Library service that indexesandmakes available all UK awarded PhD theses.
The service directlyharvests ORO and collectsvery nearly 5,000 records ofOU awarded thesis –
increasingtheir visibility.
Library Search | Slide
The OU Library search indexesall the publicationsinORO. So when you search the library you are
searchingpublicationsthe library licensesfrompublishersand publicationswe curate in ORO.
Web Search, Google | Slide
Search engineswill indexmultiple sourcestoget data to return in websearch. ORO is one of
them,so when you search Google fora publication you will oftenreturn resultsthat include both
the publishersite and a repository record.
And if ORO is the only place that has data about a publication,then ORO may be the onlyreason
the publicationgetsreturnedin search. So addingpublicationdetailsto ORO makes that
publicationvisible onthe web. it means that publicationisvisible to Google and Google Scholar
search.
Google Scholar Search | Slide
This is evenmore evidentin the resultsfrom Google Scholar for the same publications.
Numbers (Site Visits from Google Analytics) | Slide
So because ORO isindexedby so many other services itgets quite a lot of traffic– I think they are
quite big numbers.
Global visitors | Slide
Whilsttraffic iscentred around the UKand Europe,ORO doeshave a global reach.
So, whilstORO isa local industry.I spendmost of my working weekon it, otherfolk in the library
spendtime on it addingdata and managing the service. People across the OUcontribute data to
ORO – it can seemlike a cottage industry. But it doeshave a global reach. And largelythat’s
because we presentthe data in a way that can be harvestedand aggregated by other services.

3. What is ORO trying to Be? ORO attempts to be an Open Access platform for all OU
research publications
OPEN ACCESS | Slide
ORO is the OpenAccess repositoryfor the OU,so I’mgoing to have to touch on OpenAccess
publishing. OpenAccess publishingisabout making researchpublicationsfree to read as opposed
to behinda paywall.A paywall that you can onlyget beyond if you pay for a personal subscription,
or if an organisation you belongto pay for an institutional subscription. It’s about openingup
research publicationsto people beyond universities.
Institutional repositorieswere originallycreatedas part of what was calleda ‘subversive
proposition’. It was thought that in the newworld of the internet,researchcould be
communicatedin a simple,costeffective wayvia listservsand repositories. By postingresearch in
this way the financial demandsof large commercial publishers mightbe challengedand perhaps
undercut.
I’m not sure we’ve come very far in 20 years, open accesshas become a complexand contested
fieldand a fieldwhere,it’sclear to me that, openaccess is not necessarilyequitable access– and
maybe we were naieve to everconflate the 2. I don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole. If
you want to read about it check out Buranyi’s long article in Guardian from 5 yearsago that
remainsthe best starting point intrying to understandacademic publishing.
OPEN ACCESS IN ORO 2020 | Slide
Nevertheless,OROisa site of OUOpen Accesspublications. This shows us all the publicationsin
ORO with a publicationdate of 2021: 1289, or 61%, are OpenAccess.
 Some are GoldOpenAccess papers, these are papers where the publishedversionismade
freelyavailable on the publisherssite. You may have to pay an article processingcharge
for these,you may not. The OU may pay the APC for you,as part ofa transitional
agreementor on an ad-hoc basis. However,the OU may not pay, you may find yourself
having to scrabble around trying to find £2,500 from somewhere topay these charges.
Some of this 61% are GreenOpenAccess papers.These are paperswhere publishersallow
a version(oftenthe author acceptedversion) to be depositedona repository like ORO.
The GreenOpenAccesspapers in this sectionwill be ones where there is a zero or a very
short embargo periodthat has expiredsince the papers were first publishedsometime in
2021.
Additionally,there will be over 100 PhD level theses anda bunch ofother grey materials
like reports and other presentationswe cabn make freelyavailable on ORO.
 Some are restricted355, 17% – theywill mostly be those GreenOpenAccess papers where
the embargoperiod isover 12 months.
 Some are metadata only. These will be books and book chapters where there are no self-
archiving optionsopen to authors. 465, 22%. To be fair book chapters are betterthan they
were but, it’s absolutelythe case that OpenAccess for books and book chapters is not as
evolvedas it is for journal articles.

4. Open Access in ORO Numbers 2021 | Slide
And everyyear ORO isthe site of a lot of downloadsof OpenAccess materials. 835,171
downloads– that numberremovesa lotof web bot traffic. An unfilterednumberisover 2 million.
Open Access REF Requirements | SLIDE
Repositorieshave beenimportant for organisations seekingtomeetfunder OpenAccess
requirements.
For the last REF to meetthe policy OpenAccess requirementsyoucould have publishedarticelsor
conference items Gold(withquite limitedlicence conditions) ordepositan acceptedversion in
ORO with a 12 or 24 month embargo. That seemedlike a bit of an ask back in the day but is
beginningto looklike child’splay.
Open Access UKRI Requirements | Slide
From April UKRI (forjournal itemsand conference proceedings) are expectingGoldOpenAccess
with a journal title eithercompletelyOpenAccessor transitioningto it. Or greenOpenAccess
with zeroembargo and CCBY licence – and publishersare in no positionto satisfythe later
requirement.
Broken Access | Slide
So, fundersare becomingmore exactingon how to publishOpenAccess,publishersare not
bendingto these requirementsandresearchersare the folk in the middle.
OK. That’s only one OA scenario,there are many others and it’s reallycomplexso I’m going to
extract myselfagain from that rabbit hole and get back to talking about ORO.
Open Access Browser Extensions 1 | Slide
Various OpenAccess servicesrelyon openaccess papers from repositorieslike ORO – these
servicesindexopenaccess papers in repositoriesand pointto these openaccess papers from
search and indexingplatforms. It givesrepositoriesanextendedreach and placesthem in a global
scholarly communicationsinfrastructure. These include browserextensionslike CORE,Unpaywall
and Open Accessbutton
Open Access Browser Extensions 2| Slide
These browser extensionsworkby detectingDOIs on webpagesand linkingthat DOI to an Open
Access textin a repository. So when you land on a paywalledpaper on a publishersite,and the
service identifiesanopenaccess match for that DOI you getthese icons poppingup tellingyou to
click here to read a free full text version.
Open Access | Web of Science:
This openaccess data has beenlicensedtoindexingserviceslike WebofScience. So if you search
Webof Science for a paywalledpaper that isOpen Accessin ORO (or another repository) youwill
be able to click on a linkand accessthe OA repository version.
Open Access | Slide
So Open Accessis facing some seriousdilemmas,or maybe battles. But at the current time
repositorieslike ORO remainpart of the global discovery& access infrastructure.

5. Using ORO
Demo adding an item and updating an item
Help / Guides
1. SherpaRomeo(Database of publisher&journal self archivingpolicies)
https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
2. OpenResearchOnline (ORO) - https://www.open.ac.uk/library-research-support/open-access-
publishing/open-research-online
3. How to add an itemto OpenResearchOnline - https://www.open.ac.uk/library-research-
support/open-access-publishing/how-add-item-open-research-online
4. How to importan itemto OpenResearchOnline - https://www.open.ac.uk/library-research-
support/open-access-publishing/how-import-item-open-research-online
5. Managing your OpenResearchOnlineitems - https://www.open.ac.uk/library-research-
support/open-access-publishing/managing-your-open-research-online-oro-items
6. Addingfull texttoOpenResearchOnline - https://www.open.ac.uk/library-research-
support/open-access-publishing/adding-full-text-open-research-online
7. OpenResearchOnline FAQs - https://www.open.ac.uk/library-research-support/open-access-
publishing/open-research-online-oro-faqs