City Research Online

City Research Online (CRO) is the institutional repository of City University London. It includes full text versions and bibliographic records of research outputs created by members of staff and research students at City. City Research Online's mission is to:

• Provide open access to full text research, as permitted by publishers and copyright law.
• Be a reliable source of information on the research publications of City staff.
• Share openly its information with internal and external services, such as other areas of City's web presence, Google, Bing, Google Scholar and other web services and search engines.

This area of the website contains information on CRO for users. If you do not find what you need in these pages, please contact us for further help.

1. What does City Research Online contain?
2. How does the system work?
3. Why should my research be recorded in City Research Online?
4. What about copyright?
5. What version of my work should City Research Online contain?
6. I'm a new member of staff: what do I need to do?
7. I'm a PhD student and would like to use the service: what should I do?
8. I have a CRO account: what do I need to do?
9. CRO guides and policies and further help.

1. What does City Research Online contain?

The following list summarises the types of research CRO contains. We can accept research from academic, research and non-academic staff members and from City's research students.
•    Articles - accepted and submitted versions
•    Articles - published version (where publishers' copyright policies allow)
•    Working Papers (where these form part of an approved School series)
•    Books
•    Book Chapters
•    Conference papers
•    Multimedia
•    Doctoral theses
•    Other types of research, as requested by users of the service.

2. How does the system work?

CRO comprises two separate but related systems:

• A Current Research Information System (CRIS) (log-in required for access). This automatically searches a number of external databases for publications authored by City researchers, and then prompts users via email to confirm that the research found is theirs. Bibliographic records can also be added manually. The CRIS uses software called Symplectic Elements.
• An open access repository of full text versions of City's research. These digital versions of research papers are checked for eligibility on copyright grounds (see section below for further information on this), then made available to anyone who wishes to access, read, make use of and cite them. The repository uses software called ePrints.

In a nutshell, the CRIS records bibliographic data of all research published by City's researchers, and the open access repository makes this research available to anyone who wishes to access it.

3. Why should my research be recorded in City Research Online?

Having a record of your research in CRO provides a number of benefits:

• It will, over time, provide information to other areas of City's web presence.
• It allows one-click downloads of lists of publications, as well as export to reference management software.
• It allows the uploading of full text versions of research to the system.

There are a number of reasons why full text versions of research should be added to CRO:

• To allow anyone to access it. Instead of being locked away behind subscription walls, research made openly accessible in City Research Online can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. This means research is accessed, read and built upon by people outside of traditional UK Higher Education (HE) circles and those within HE whose institutions are not able to subscribe to all relevant journals.
• To increase its visibility. Papers placed in repositories such as City Research Online have high rankings in search engines such as Google, Bing and Google Scholar, meaning your work gets found more often and more easily.
• To increase its citation count. Studies have shown that research made openly accessible gets read, and hence cited more, than research that remains closed.
• To showcase it as research produced by members of City University London.
• To preserve it for the future. City Research Online uses technology which ensures the long-term preservation of City's research output, for access and use by future generations.

4. What about copyright?

The CRO team will undertake copyright checks on behalf of City researchers for all uploaded work before making it live in the system.

Full text publications placed in CRO are covered by copyright law and clear conditions of use are displayed on the web pages associated with the documents. Readers will have no more rights to copy and download than in any other publication. Readers are made aware that documents may be protected by both foreign and UK copyright law, and documents may not be used for any commercial purpose.

The CRO team is working with the many publishers who now permit the archiving of articles in institutional repositories, to comply with any stipulations that publishers make with regard to making articles available via open access. Where a publisher places an embargo for a fixed period of time on the publication of work in an institutional repository, the CRO team will store the item until the embargo has passed and then make it live.

You can find out your publisher's position using the SHERPA RoMEO website or by checking the Copyright Transfer Agreement you may have signed on publishing a paper. The CRO team will help if you are unsure about any aspect of this.

5. What version of my work should City Research Online contain?

A bibliographic record may be created in City Research Online for work that is unpublished, in preparation or submitted but not yet accepted, but in this case users must complete the status field in the system to show the relevant status information and must apply the "make this publication invisible" function to the record by clicking on the relevant icon. This can be amended once work is accepted for publication. The "make this publication invisible" function may also be used for other purposes such as confidential reports, or older publications for which users do not wish to have details made available publically.

Publications marked as "invisible" will not appear in the searchable bibliographic content of the database. Any records which are found not to have been correctly marked can be amended by the Repository Manager if requested to do so by the School concerned.

In relation to full text items, a research paper must be deposited in CRO in its "author final" version. This is the final, post-refereeing version, as provided to the publisher prior to publication. This will ensure work in the repository is accessible to all, but still closely associated with the publication containing the published version. Where available, CRO contains links to an article's DOI (digital object identifier) and the homepage of the journal's or publisher's website, ensuring the published version is clearly identified (and hence properly citeable) to users of the repository.

For full guidance on versions of academic papers for authors, please see the VERSIONS toolkit for researchers.

6. I'm a new member of staff: what do I need to do?

City requires academic and research staff to maintain a complete bibliographic record of their research publications in CRO, and strongly encourages staff to provide the full text, "author-final" version of research papers for open access via the repository.

The CRO team will create an account for new members of academic and research staff: you should receive an introductory email and log-in details for the service, or you can contact the CRO team directly to request this.

7. I'm a PhD student and would like to use the service: what should I do?

We welcome use of the service by PhD students. Please email the CRO team with your details (name and School/Department) and we will set up an account for you.

8. I have a CRO account: what do I need to do?

When you start to use the system, if you have previously worked for any other higher education institutions you may need to add the names of these to the search settings in your account in order to ensure that your publications are correctly identified during the automatic search process. The CRO team will provide help with this on request.

You should approve publications found by the system for you (initially recorded as "pending" until this has been done), or decline them if you are not the author. This will move the bibliographic data into the live part of the system. Any publications not held in the external databases accessed by the system will need to be added manually. You can do this yourself, or the CRO team will do it for you if you provide them with your publications list.

You are also strongly encouraged to provide full text items wherever possible. You can upload these yourself within the system (this will trigger the CRO team to undertake the copyright checks as above), or if you prefer you can email a copy of the text to the CRO team and it will be uploaded for you.

9. CRO guides and policies and further help

You will find user guides within the system by clicking on the help button at the top of the screen. The CRO team will also be very happy to come and provide one-to-one support for you on request, whether as initial training in use of the system or to help with more advanced use. You may also find the following information of use:

• How to export publication lists from CRO (Word document)
• Guidance on printing your publication list for the Standard Academic CV (Word document)
• How to upload full text outputs to CRO (Word document)
• Open access policies page

Formatting of bibliographic data

City Research Online uses the APA 6th Citation Style to format bibliographic data for reports generated from the system. The style was chosen as a suitable generic way of styling references from the range of academic disciplines at City.

City Research Online governance

City Research Online is currently in its project phase. When the project phase finishes, CRO will be governed by a Steering Committee which will set the strategic goals for the service, reporting to the Senate Research Committee. The service will also have a Working Group, comprising Library staff, to deal with technical and administrative issues that might arise.

Planned developments

A number of developments are planned for the future, including:

• Further integration of publications data and openly accessible research into City's web presence, particularly through automatic uploading of publication details to individual staff profiles when these are developed.
• The development of a database of City's academic staff expertise, which will be used to enrich data about staff and their publications.
• The facility to store and serve City's examined PhD theses.