Introducing the SDG Classification Module for the CORE Dashboard

Figure 1: SDG Classification in the CORE Dashboard

A Novel Tool for SDG Research Classification

We are pleased to announce the launch of the UN SDG Classification Module for the CORE Dashboard, a purpose-driven tool designed to streamline and automate the process of classifying academic research according to these goals. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 global objectives adopted in 2015 to address key challenges such as poverty, inequality, and environmental sustainability. They aim to promote inclusive development, economic growth, and environmental protection, with the overarching goal of ensuring no one is left behind by 2030. Each goal includes specific targets to guide global action towards a more sustainable and equitable future. read more...

The CORE Rights Retention Statement tracker

CORE recently introduced the Rights Retention Statements tracker to the CORE Dashboard, and it is now available to CORE members. An increasing number of UK institutions have implemented an institutional rights retention policy, specifying rights for publications for all articles (and sometimes books) with a specific publisher. There is a useful map of these institutions here. Once a policy is in place, the majority of articles will probably not have a rights statement within each article. However, even with an institutional agreement in place, there are cases when it is important to check the text. read more...

CORE Board of Supporters Meeting

This week saw the latest CORE Board of Supporters Meeting take place online. We had 28 attendees from our member institutions and, for the first time, we were also joined by institutions that are working with CORE as a part of the URSN pilot project, funded by SPARC.

The Board of Supporters is an integral component of the CORE governance structure and exists as part of our role as signatories to The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructures (POSI).

Figure 1: The CORE governance structure

Professor Petr Knoth hosted the meeting and first introduced a round up of the work that CORE has been doing in the last six months, covering some of the new tools that CORE has released for members including the Rights Retention module, new indexing request capabilities, better email alert tracking and the ability to categorise a repository’s content into ‘sets’ allowing for better management of your content. read more...

CORE launches reindexing button for data providers

We support a huge range of data providers, from the smallest institutional repositories to the largest Open Access and preprint repositories such as PubMed Central and Arxiv. Each of these repositories have differing needs but one requirement for almost all of them is increasing the visibility and discoverability of their content. Being indexed by CORE is a key component in meeting these requirements. A recent study demonstrated that being indexed by CORE increases downloads from a repository by an average of 16%, and up to 32% in some cases. read more...

University of Chicago adopts CORE’s article deduplication tool

CORE’s unique position with a global view of all open repositories enables us to work closely with its member organisations to develop and deliver tools that benefit repositories and repository managers. CORE recently introduced the new CORE Dashboard Versions and Duplicates module which provides a simple interface for identifying versions and duplicates in a repository. The system identifies different versions of articles and enables side-by-side reviewing. The different versions can then be marked using the widely used NISO Journal Article Versions (JAV) taxonomy. You can read a full overview of the new module in this recent blog post. read more...

CORE introduces comprehensive new guide for Data Providers

For a data provider, being indexed by CORE is a straightforward process as indexing is done via OAI-PMH which is a standard protocol for repository interoperability. Most common repository platforms such as EPrints, DSpace or Open Journal Systems (OJS) support OAI-PMH. There are however several additional stages that can be undertaken to ensure the repository is best configured to enable CORE to index the repository’s content to maximum effect.

In an ongoing effort to help our Data Providers, CORE has introduced a detailed new guide that provides a wealth of information for repository managers and others. The new guide covers everything including how the repository should be configured for OAI-PMH. It is, sadly, a fairly common problem that the OAI-PMH endpoint of a repository is misconfigured or not functional. This can occur even when other functionalities of the repository appear to be working without issues. This has a huge impact on how visible the repository is to the outside world, and subsequent ramifications for the discoverability of its content. read more...

Identifying and extracting authors’ Rights Retention Statements from full text academic articles

CORE has been working closely with our member institutions to co-create the design and functionality for a new module that can assist with the discovery and management of authors’ Rights Retention statements for published works.

The problem

A Rights Retention Statement is a declaration by an author that they retain certain copyright rights to their scholarly work, even when they sign a publication agreement with a journal publisher. This statement is often used to ensure that authors can comply with open access mandates from funding agencies, such as those under Plan S, which require that the research they fund be made freely available to the public. Under Plan S, the Rights Retention strategy is a significant aspect because it aims to ensure that authors retain copyright on their articles, even when they publish in subscription journals. read more...

Detecting duplicate records and manuscript versions in your repository

There are many reasons why a repository may end up with multiple copies of an article, for example, having the author’s original manuscript and the final post-review copy is a common scenario of near-duplicate content. Another example might be when multiple co-authors deposit the same manuscript without being aware of each other. Detecting (near-)duplicates and distinguishing them from different versions of the same article is both challenging and time-consuming. We have seen that a typical repository will have hundreds of duplicates and near-duplicate records, signifying the scale of this issue. read more...

Asking CORE members what matters to them…

We recently held the inaugural meeting of the CORE Board of Supporters where we were joined by 32 representatives from the organisations that have committed to supporting the ongoing sustainability of CORE by joining our membership program.

These amazing institutions are critical to the survival of CORE and we’re incredibly grateful for the support they provide us.

Current CORE members

We work with our members as part of our commitment to The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), by listening to our members we can understand precisely what is most important to them. Prior to this kickoff meeting, we therefore sent a wide-ranging survey to gauge what really matters to our members’ repositories, their users and the staff that manage them. read more...

Update on Delivering the CORE Membership Programme

We’re keen to update you with the latest developments as we continue to welcome more CORE Members and keep improving the tools and support for members while delivering on our mission to index all open access research worldwide. In March, we welcomed another six new institutions who have joined CORE as Supporting and Sustaining members; University of Exeter, Cardiff University, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Hull, University of Nottingham and University of Strathclyde. A huge thank you goes out to all of these amazing folks! read more...