Equal partners? Improving the integration between DSpace and Symplectic Elements

Abstract

While self-submission by academics was regarded as the ideal way to add content to Open Repositories in the early days of such systems, the reality today is that many institutional repositories obtain their content automatically from integration with research management systems. The institutional DSpace repositories at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and at the University of Waikato (UoW) were integrated with Symplectic Elements in 2010 (AUT) and in 2014 (UoW). Initial experiences at AUT suggested a mismatch between the interaction options offered to users of Symplectic Elements on one hand and the actions available to repository managers via the DSpace review workflow functionality on the other hand. Our presentation explores these mismatches and their negative effects on the repository as well as on the user experience. We then present the changes we made to the DSpace review workflow to improve the integration. We hope that our experiences will contribute to an improvement in the integration between repository software and research management systems.