Library Research News: July Edition
In this issue
- The SPATIAL Project – an Open Educational Resource in our Deakin Research Online Repository
- Showcasing Your Research: Choosing Top Publications That Tell Your Story
- Elements Upgrade
- Everything you’ve always wanted to know about open access
- Hot tip: Assign a DOI for your reports by adding them to DRO
- What’s new in scholarly communication?
- Event roundup
The SPATIAL Project – an Open Educational Resource in our Deakin Research Online Repository
DRO is the repository where all of Deakin’s research outputs are collated. This also includes material such as theses, datasets and the University’s Special and Cultural Collection.
One exciting, and growing, set of resources in DRO is Open Educational Resources (OER). The Library’s Research Outputs team, within Scholarly Communications, works closely with the OER team to ensure these important resources are openly discoverable and usable.
June saw the launch of an exciting new OER, The Spatial Project, an initiative led by Cailin Mellberg and Matthew Retallack from the School of Medicine.
The Spatial Project is a database of anatomical images released under a CC-BY-NC licence. The images reconstruct cross-sectional planes from The Visible Human female data set, courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. One of the largest challenges for students in health-related fields is to build a mental model of the structures of the human body. The Spatial Project addresses this by making cadaveric cross-sectional resources openly available, to support exploration and learning. It provides a range of image formats to meet industry standards.
The Spatial Project is somewhat different from other resources in DRO. The software underlying DRO, Figshare for Institutions, enables the creation of Collections. Collections are just like any other resource – they are described by similar metadata and can be represented by a DOI, but their purpose is to collate and represent a set of other resources within them. To date, the Collections capability has not been heavily used in DRO. By contrast, the landing page for the Spatial Project is a Collection, housing a set of sub-resources for the Neck, Head, Chest, Abdomen, Hip, Lower Limb, and whole-of-body.
You can browse the collection yourself here: https://doi.org/10.26187/deakin.c.8030365 .
Showcasing Your Research: Choosing Top Publications That Tell Your Story
When selecting publications for grants, promotions, awards, or research assessments, it’s worth looking beyond just the citation counts. The publications that tell the strongest story are often those that best demonstrate the quality, significance, and influence of your research.
A publication’s value can be reflected in many ways – through its contribution to knowledge, the role you played in the work, recognition from peers, or evidence of wider engagement (such as that from media attention, policy influence, or successful collaborations).
Accessing publication metrics
You can use the following tools to gather evidence when evaluating your publications:
- Research Metrics Dashboard – entry-level citation metrics and publication analysis.
- Research Metrics Help Guide – guidance on research metrics, responsible metrics, citation indicators, altmetrics, researcher profiles, and sources of publication data.
- Where Should I Publish find journals that match your research area, explore Open Access publishing options, and compare journal metrics and rankings.
Check out our LibGuide page on choosing top publications.
For support, contact your supervisor, mentors, the Grants Office and the Library to help you showcase and strengthen your research impact.
Elements Upgrade
Elements will be upgraded on the 3rd – 4th August. Elements will be upgraded to version 7.5 on the evening of Monday 3 August, and so please note that the system will be unavailable from 5pm on Monday 3 August and access is estimated to return from 12pm on Tuesday 4 August. Please note this window is dependent on testing and subject to change.
Please contact your Librarian if you have any queries or notice any irregularities.
Everything you’ve always wanted to know about open access
Welcome back! This month we are going to discuss the term bibliodiversity.
So, what is bibliodiversity?
You may be familiar with the term biodiversity. Think healthy ecosystems teeming with life, colour and vibrance through variety. Bibliodiversity works in much the same way, but in the world of publishing.
In academic publishing, bibliodiversity goes beyond simply publishing more research. It encourages a scholarly communication environment that values diversity in who creates knowledge, how that knowledge is shared, and who can access it. A bibliodiverse knowledge ecosystem supports a range of publishers, multilingual scholarship, open access and community-led initiatives, as well as research outputs beyond the traditional journal article, including books, datasets and creative works (AKA Non-Traditional Research Outputs, or NTROs).
Why Does It Matter?
A healthy publishing ecosystem benefits everyone. By supporting a wider range of voices, languages and knowledge systems, bibliodiversity makes research more innovative, inclusive and relevant while ensuring local, Indigenous and underrepresented perspectives are not overshadowed by dominant publishing practices.
Bibliodiversity also strengthens the resilience of scholarly communication. When authors support a variety of publishing models and publishers, it reduces reliance on a small number of commercial providers and helps the publishing landscape remain dynamic, sustainable and responsive to changing needs.
By encouraging open and inclusive publishing practices, bibliodiversity helps research reach broader communities – increasing its potential impact.
Supporting Bibliodiversity in Practice
So, how can we work towards bibliodiversity? Through small, practical choices:
- Publish through a range of channels, including university presses, scholar-led journals, open access venues, and publications in different languages where appropriate. Deakin hosts a range of diamond journals, check them out here.
- Share research in diverse formats and for diverse audiences, such as journal articles, books, datasets, policy briefs, websites, creative works, and plain-language resources.
- Improve access to knowledge by depositing publications and research outputs in disciplinary or institutional repositories (including DRO) and making work openly available whenever possible. Check out these LibGuides for more help:
- Engage with and value diverse forms of scholarship, including research from different regions, languages, knowledge traditions, and underrepresented communities.
- Support inclusive publishing practices by citing diverse authors and perspectives, recognising a broad range of research outputs, and contributing as a reviewer, editor, supervisor, or mentor.
- Champion community-led and Indigenous knowledge sharing and supporting publishing initiatives that elevate local and traditionally underrepresented voices.
Helping Bibliodiversity Flourish
Every contribution helps. Through our publishing choices, we can help cultivate a vibrant and resilient scholarly communication ecosystem. Check out our Where Should I Publish tool to learn about different journals and types of open access. And as always, contact your Librarian if you have further questions.
Hot tip: Assign a DOI for your reports by adding them to DRO
Have you written a report or other Non-Traditional Research Output (NTRO) and are looking to get it a DOI?
Deakin Research Online (DRO), our research repository, is an authoritative location for hosting of these kinds of outputs. All Deakin research outputs published in DRO are automatically assigned a DOI that points to the DRO record. All you need to do is add your NTRO to Elements and a DRO entry and DOI will be automatically created.
There may be occasions when you’ll want a DOI that does not point to the DRO record, such as if you are hosting a report on another Deakin-owned site or the site of a funder or research partner. In this case, please contact your Librarian for assistance.
What’s new in scholarly communication?
If you are interested in some further reading, check out these articles:
Making scientific knowledge free for all – an article in The Conversation authored by Frédéric Schmidt, Camille Thomas and Romain Vaucher which discusses the academic publishing landscape and open access.
Rethinking Rankings: A Moral Ambition? – in this article Elizabet Gadd reflects on global university rankings in the context of Rutger Bregman’s Moral Ambition.
How Can Nonprofit Presses Advance the Diamond Ecosystem? – an article from Katina reflecting on three nonprofit presses that convened a workshop to explore how established nonprofits might meet existing needs in diamond publishing.
Equity in Open Access Means Thinking Beyond Fees – an article from Katina authored by Johan Rooryck discusses equity in open access, beyond the topic of fees.
Think preprints are unreliable? Analysis of 70,000 studies might change your mind – an article from Nature authored by Mohana Basu discussing preprints in the field of biomedicine.
The European Union and Australia successfully conclude Horizon Europe negotiations – this short news article
The Emotional Rollercoaster of Scholarly Publishing – an article from The Scholarly Kitchen authored by Haseeb Irfanullah reflecting on some of the challenges associated with the review process in the Scholarly Publishing system.
Social Media in Scholarly Communications — SSP Pulse Check Report – an article from the Scholarly Kitchen authored by Melanie Dolechek diving into results from the June 2026 Scholarly Communications Pulse Check survey regarding social media.
Event roundup
AI Hub: Effective prompting with AI
Wednesday, 26 August, online, 10:00-11:00am
AI Hub: Deakin AI Principles in Action
Thursday, 10 September, 10:00 – 11:00am
Details for all upcoming library events will be made available on the Library events page.
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Library Research News is a regular publication from the library, publishing library-related news for Deakin researchers. To stay in the loop, please subscribe to Article.
To access library research services, please contact your librarian or navigate to Research via the library website. Scholarly Services Librarians bring discipline-specific expertise related to the following key areas:
- expert searching
- research data management
- Copyright for research
- publishing and open access
- research outputs stewardship
- research metrics.