9/22/20
By now, you’ve learned what CADRE can do for researchers who need access to high-quality, standardized big bibliometric resources and data-mining tools. At an institutional level, CADRE not only helps academic libraries provide these resources to patrons, but the platform also assists libraries in adding value to research output data.
Universities can use CADRE to securely access and query across large collections of bibliometric datasets to identify and evaluate trends in research output that may not otherwise be visible to aid in decision-making for research.
For example, academic libraries have trouble assessing how much they invest in open access publications and the associated article processing charges (APCs) typically used for those publications, which are not always paid formally through a library budget. These informal payments create a shadow acquisitions budget, meaning universities’ full investment in open access publications is not completely accounted for and not accurately represented in a library’s budget.
With CADRE, universities can bring their acquisitions budget out of the shadows.
In one use case, a university queried CADRE’s collections of bibliometric datasets for its researchers’ citations and analyzed the data to create an institutional publishing profile. The profile detailed which venues published researchers’ work, as well as if the venue was an open, hybrid or closed publisher. The institution linked the data with publicly available tools and reports, such as publisher price lists and Unpaywall queries, to report on the APC spent and the proportion of research output published in open, hybrid, and closed publication venues.
Using a methodology created at the California Digital Library, the institution created projections for the costs of transformational read-and-publish agreements with major publishers, or agreements geared toward open access publishing where payments to a publisher for reading an article and payments for publishing it are bundled into a single contract. The projections give administrators the information they need when considering contract renewals and evaluating publishers’ offers to participate in APC discount programs.
CADRE is more than a cyberinfrastructure changing how people perform research with big bibliometric data; the platform also supports administrators in making important data-driven decisions around research and acquisitions spending.
Interested in requesting a trial with CADRE? Let us know today.
Willa Liburd Tavernier at IU Libraries contributed to this post.
