University of Toronto OA: TSpace Repository
Implementation: It was clearly well thought out and well organized so that anyone involved or interested in depositing work in the repository can have their questions answered quickly. It clearly delineates who may participate and the criteria for submissions. Right from the start the policy also accounts for exceptions such as researchers who are not directly involved with the University of Toronto but wish to submit their work, or publisher embargoes. Part of the implementation that I found to be most interesting was the mention that graduate students and PhD candidates are required to submit their theses and dissertations but there was no mention of requirements or suggestions for faculty and other researchers. I think that more clarity of required submissions might be beneficial to the policy since it mostly seems that it is entirely voluntary except for theses and dissertations but I have a feeling that this is not correct since it does not seem to match their mission for a comprehensive record.
Budget: TSpace was established by the University of Toronto Libraries and so budgeting would have likely required additional staff to monitor and administrate the repository. They also would have required staff to engage with scholars should they have questions or requests regarding their submissions and deposited materials. Additionally, funds would have been needed to afford the space and technological maintenance for TSpace depending on the existing technological infrastructure of the university.
Risks: One of the risks taken with this policy is that it requires contributors to allow the University of Toronto to “reproduce [and] distribute” the work. The policy states that this is for them to transfer the works to new formats should this be required but this might cause some scholars to pause if they want to retain more control of how their work is reproduced. The corresponding benefit of this policy is that the author never transfers copyright like they would have to do for journal articles and it allows them to then publish in other journals, especially since the policy does account for possible publisher restrictions. Aside from this potential risk, there does not seem to be any other large problems with submitting because the policy is so accommodating for exceptions even stating that those who needs to remove their work from the repository temporarily may do so or permanently may submit a request.
Benefits: There are additional benefits of the repository as well both for the university and for the scholars who submit. First and foremost, TSpace creates a publication record of the University of Toronto and its scholars’ works. TSpace does explain that it is not necessarily the ultimate goal to act as an archive since this is not always possible due to publisher restrictions. If no publisher restrictions exist then TSpace could act as an archive for scholars of varying levels, but at the very least, even with restrictions regarding the full access of articles, it could still act as a record of all a scholar’s publications through the metadata and record of the article’s citation. This could be very useful for those seeking promotion or tenure since it would have all their works well organized and easily accessible, even if not in complete form. Another benefit of the policy is that students, including undergraduates, can deposit works in TSpace. This allows them to start building their scholarly record from a young age which may help lend legitimacy to their career and provide them with exposure to other scholars.
Measuring Success: In order to evaluate the success of the repository, the administrators should measure the rate of deposits and the demographics of who is depositing. They could track how many works are being produced by those affiliated with the university and compare it to how many are being deposited. To claim success, the percentage of works being deposited should be at least fifty percent of the total works being produced. A higher percentage, perhaps greater than seventy-five percent, would be ideal since the goal of the repository is to create a comprehensive record of publications coming from the University of Toronto. If fewer than fifty percent of publications being produced are deposited they cannot consider themselves successful in their mission since it is absolutely not comprehensive. Furthermore, they could assess what percentage of published works, not just produced works, are being deposited. From these numbers, they could then poll and determine what is more appealing about publishing than depositing in TSpace. This would allow them to reevaluate their policy to remove any unforeseen blocks to depositing or add any elements that might offer incentive to scholars. In order to find this information, the university could require at least faculty and researchers to report whenever they produce a completed work and when they have an article be picked up for publication.
Monitoring what kinds and levels of scholars are depositing works would also allow the administrators to assess how comprehensive the record of publication for the university is which could help them determine if there are successful meeting their objective. From this they could then identify any gaps and work towards greater recruitment of scholars who could fill those gaps. They could also set varying thresholds of what constitutes success for each type of scholar. For example, the percentage of faculty with submissions should be higher than the percentage of undergraduates doing research because arguably the work of the faculty is more important to the record.
These types of statistics should be collected every few years so that they can fluidly adjust their policy and ensure that they are in fact capturing an accurate depiction of the record of scholarly works being produced at the University of Toronto.
SPARC, Open Access Guidelines. "Campus Open-access Policy 'Choice Points'".
https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2021_fall/inls700_001/Readings/SPARC-OpenAccessGuidelines.pdf
University of Toronto Open Access Repository Policy accessible here:
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/about/collectionpolicies.jsp
I have neither given nor received aid while working on this assignment. I have completed the graded portion BEFORE looking at anyone else's work on this assignment. Signed Rebecca Wade