Research Information Management at Duke University: A Researcher-centered Approach
Duke University Libraries have worked collaboratively with other campus units to aggregate and manage research information to make knowledge produced by Duke researchers more broadly and openly available, help researchers build their reputations, archive copies of Duke scholarship, and to help researchers find collaborators, students find mentors, and journalists, policy makers, and the general public find experts. In order to achieve these goals, Duke is using the Symplectic Elements research information management (RIM) system, seamlessly integrating it with VIVO researcher profiles and the campus DukeSpace institutional repository. Researcher profiles are created automatically, populated with information sourced from both internal and external sources, and customized by profile holders or others delegated to do this on their behalf. Publication metadata are collected from numerous bibliographic sources such as Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and ArXiv, and Sherpa/Romeo integration assists librarians and scholars in navigating the complex rights landscape. Today the Scholars@Duke researcher expertise portal publicly features the scholarship, research, and activities of Duke faculty and academic staff. Duke faculty can conveniently upload full text versions of their publications for permanent archival and broader access, and links to open access versions of their work are integrated into their citations and public profiles alongside links to the published versions In implementing and promoting these services, Duke has taken a researcher-focused communications strategy, emphasizing how these services directly benefit scholars by saving them time and increasing the visibility of their publications. The libraries have also collaborated with units such as the Office of News & Communication to help embed links to open access versions of referenced research in campus press releases to maximize and measure impact. Widgets and an open API also enable easy reuse of Scholars@Duke information on campus and researcher web pages, as well as in library catalogs and Google Scholar, providing further convenience to the campus and global research community.
