QU Library collaborates with Elsevier

Qatar University Library (QUL) and Elsevier, a leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, have established a collaboration to maximise visibility, impact and dissemination of articles published by QU faculty and researchers.Through Elsevier’s ScienceDirect APIs, QUL’s institutional repository now receives an automated feed of metadata and abstracts for all articles published by QU authors in Elsevier journals. Embargo-end dates indicating when an article can be made available to the public are also provided to facilitate funding body compliance. Published versions of the ScienceDirect articles are embedded within QSpace, which means that usage is added to aggregated usage statistics of the articles, which is helpful for authors, QU and Elsevier. It would not be possible to aggregate this usage if different versions of the article existed across multiple platforms.The embedded ScienceDirect articles are available in full text to all users of QSpace that have access to ScienceDirect, not only those affiliated with QU. Users affiliated with institutions subscribing to ScienceDirect are linked to the full text based on IP recognition by the APIs. In instances where users are not affiliated with a subscribing institution, they see a first page preview of the article and full text articles can be accessed via document delivery services. The automated population of the repository is applicable for both open access and subscription articles. In addition, QSpace is the first institutional repository to use DSpace plug-ins, which facilitate easy integration of ScienceDirect APIs within a repository. Dr Imad Bachir, director, QUL, said, “The project addresses several of our library needs, including more easily showcasing research published by our faculty and researchers, facilitating a simplified workflow for users and measuring readership statistics through consistency in use of article metadata. ScienceDirect APIs also facilitate our compliance with funding body policies by providing automatic updates of article embargo data in our repository.”