For this final post for Open Access Week we will be looking at CCCU’s institutional repository, CReaTE. We’ve already mentioned it a few times this week, but that’s because it’s really important in relation to open access, not just for the REF, but also because it’s probably the easiest way for people to make their research outputs accessible for free. So what are the benefits of using CReaTE for you, the researcher:

We’ve already talked about how using CReaTE can help make your research to be eligible for the next REF. So how else can CReaTE help us?

Improve the visibility of your research

Adding your work to CReaTE, even if you can’t add the full text or actual research output itself (e.g. if it’s a performance (although you could add a link to a video of this!)) means that people can easily find it when they search the internet. Research on CReaTE will usually rank higher in Google or Google Scholar searches due to CReaTE’s compliance with international metadata standards. URLs within CReaTE are short and persistent, which makes it easy to cite your work and share online. CReaTE also makes it easy to share your research via social media with “share” buttons on the bottom of the web page enabling you or other researchers to share material on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and many other services.

 

Increase your citation count

It makes sense that the more people can find and see/experience your work, the higher your citation count should be.

 

Organise your research

Having (at least the metadata about) all your research in one place means that other people can easily see what you’ve been doing, and also means that you can easily access your own work. No more lost papers! You can use the link to your CReaTE page (see mine here) to share your research, and you can also link to this page from your profile page on the CCCU website. Please contact IT Services for information about how to do this.

 

Collect usage stats

You can see the number of downloads per month your work as had at the bottom of each CReaTE item page, and you can also click through to see more statistics for your work:

Enhance the profile of your university

Getting our research seen by others is a really important way we can enhance CCCU’s profile and build on our reputation for great research. There is so much excellent research going on at CCCU, much of which people outside the university are not aware of. It would be great if we can get more and more of our research out into the world so that it can be used both in practical ways and as an inspiration to others. Using CReaTE is one, relatively easy, way that we can do this.

If you have any questions about how to use CReaTE, open access or anything else related to this week’s blog posts, please contact Claire Choong, Learning & Research Librarian (Scholarly Communication).