Open Repository revamp

Immediately after acquiring Open Repository last year, our team has set out to build the most significant upgrade and revamp the platform has seen. We are happy and proud that we are finally able to reveal the results of this work.

The first goal of the revamp was to empower administrators, enabling them to do more from the user interface, with greater ease. The second goal was an enhanced end user experience, both on desktop and mobile devices.

Power to the admin

Among other improvements, we’ve worked hard on three flagship features.

Submission form configuration: An Open Repository admin can perform live updates to the submission forms, even without requiring a repository restart. This can be done in a safe way, as the admin can also easily roll back to the previous configuration. Want to make even some more experimental changes? Instead of doing your changes straight on production, execute them first on your staging server, which is part of your Open Repository subscription.

Import of metadata and files: An Open Repository admin can prepare a full batch upload with a spreadsheet. Within the spreadsheet, the admin can make references to full text files. Those full text files can be uploaded by the admin as one big zip that Open Repository unpacks. In case the files are hosted somewhere on the web, URLs to the files can be provided in the spreadsheet and Open Repository will download them automatically during the ingest process.

Static pages and documentation management: To document Open Access policies, guidelines for submitters and colleague repository admins, an Open Repository admin can easily create static pages with information, using a built-in editor that doesn’t require HTML knowledge. These pages can either be made publicly available or restricted to admins.

Enhanced end user experience

Searching and retrieving information in an Open Repository is different from your run off the mill DSpace. Users can switch between a normal list view and the Open Repository grid view. Search results can be easily exported to CSV, BibTex, Endnote and Reference Manager.

Item pages are enhanced and include:

• Citation counts from Scopus
• Large thumbnails and emphasis on easy access to the files
• Social sharing buttons
• Related items from PubMed
• Altmetric statistics
• Star-rating
• Request-a-copy for restricted content
• Embedded Youtube videos
• Automated open access checks

Author profiles: attribution to your authors is prominently visible in Open Repository. Different name variants of the same person can be brought together in a single author profile that neatly lists all publications linked to the author.

Statistics: Measuring the impact of your repository content has become an indispensable aspect of Repository software. So we added various statistics about the repository usage. This world map, for example, that shows you where traffic is coming from.

Give it a try

You can try the Open Repository platform online by contacting our product specialist Ignace Deroost through info@atmire.com. Migrations of existing repositories to Open Repository and setup of entirely new repositories on the platform are available as of today.