Publication Title
MLA/SLA 2023
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
5-2023
Keywords
montana
Abstract
Providence’s institutional repository Digital Commons launched in 2018, serving as the enterprise’s scholarly activity repository. After several years of successful repository usage and readership tracking, research administration initiated a new request: peer review tracking. The repository previously tracked number of article submissions but did not assess if content was published in peer reviewed journals. How can we retroactively and proactively track peer reviewed articles on our institutional repository? Simple ask, complicated answer.
Library staff had no previous practices in place to record whether content was peer reviewed or not. The initial request seemed simple, yetbecame increasingly complex to create both a cumulative list of current peer reviewed content and best practice guidelines for tracking future materials. While always looking to automate processes, this specific request required considerable manual work. Library staff created a four-point guideline to identify peer reviewed submissions to the repository. To complete deliverables at zero-cost, staff reviewed options to identify lists and databases of peer reviewed journals. Staff exported journal lists and, using a cumulative spreadsheet, implemented duplicate data identifiers to mark peer reviewed journal titles. This identifier helped cut out overall worktime for assessing peer reviewed journal titles. Finally came the task of hand-identifying peer versus non-peer reviewed journal titles in the repository for all titles not captured in online lists.
After finalizing the cumulative spreadsheet and duplicate identifier rules, staff could quickly add journal titles from monthly scholarly submissions, compare titles to what exist on the cumulative spreadsheet, and identify potentially new titles for reporting. The project was well received by research leadership and administration and gives library staff a unique foothold with new and emerging research metrics for the healthcare system. Collecting peer reviewed data has allowed the repository to better report on the number of journal titles submitted, peer versus non-peer reviewed articles, and break down reporting structures monthly and annually for stakeholder needs.
Specialty/Research Institute
Library Science
