Day 26 - Effectively shared

One of my plans for the summer is to start uploading my research a lot more to my institution's research repository.

'What' I hear you cry 'is a research repository?'

The Repository@Napier is intended to be an Open Access showcase for the published research output of the university. Whenever possible, refereed documents accepted for publication, or finished artistic compositions presented in public, will be made available here in full digital format, and hyperlinks to standard published versions will be provided.
Edinburgh Napier University staff and research students are required to place in the repository, post-refereed, accepted texts of documents being published, together with texts of papers given at conferences; but data sets, programs, images, scores, music, and exhibition catalogues should also be lodged in digital format.

For many composers, there can often be a lot of research which is never effectively shared (to use REF speak). We may present a final score with a recording, but the nature of the research questions that went into the process may be left to wide interpretation. Why is there so little research published about technical or aesthetic details of composers' work? I suspect it may arise in part from the fact that composers spend their time writing music, not words, but I think that we should be looking to engage a bit more with looking at how we present composition at research. I'll touch on this more another day - it is too late and I am too tired - but for today, I want to get back to the respository.

I like the fact that I will be able to deposit conference presentations, or even sketch material (if relevant), and other forms of presentation of my research questions on the repository. I've already started linking (on my website) to the PDFs of some of the scores that I have uploaded, but I want to take this much further, and encourage my PhD students to do the same.

I'm a big fan of open access, although I am keenly aware of the usefulness of peer-reviewed journals to establish your name in a field. It might be interesting, if anyone has the time, or if it is even possible, to do a quick review of the journal articles published by academics in the 2014 REF (once it is completed) and see whether the higher rated articles are still in the higher rated journals. Although the regulations say that location of publication is irrelevant, with that number of outputs to be reviewed and with the small length of time allowed for the process, I'm not confident that there will be much difference. The rating of a journal is still apparently considered as criteria for notability of research within my own institution, and I suspect that may be the same across the sector.

I'm quite excited to be preparing presentations for INTIME 2014 on notation (and which will also feature a performance by me), and for Music and shared imaginaries: nationalisms, communities, and choral singing at University of Aveiro, Portugal on the Scratch Orchestra's Nature Study Notes. Once I've finished these presentations, they will be available on the repository and I will link to them from here.