WIRE (Wolverhampton Intellectual Repository and E-Theses)

 

What is it?

WIRE is the University’s institutional repository, or digital archive. It is intended to capture, store and preserve our research output and to make it available to the research community through Open Access, e.g. via search engines such as Google Scholar.

 

Its content includes journal articles, books, conference papers and theses. WIRE is powered by Open Repository, a BioMed Central company.

 

Why use it?

Work published in Open Access institutional repositories can gain more citations than research published in journals that limit access through paid for subscriptions. That means increased exposure to your work and all the benefits that come with it – raising your profile as a researcher, and strengthening the research profile of the University.

Increasingly, more research funding bodies are insisting that work carried out under their grants must also be deposited within an institutional or subject specific repository.

 

Why use it now?

In order to be eligible for the REF 2020, authors have to ensure that final peer- reviewed manuscripts are deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance for publication. Research outputs accepted for publication from 1 April 2016 have to be submitted in this way.

The University has also made it mandatory for researchers to make their work available via WIRE, if permitted to do so by the publisher.

Some researchers prefer using networking sites such as ResearchGate or Academia to share their publications and connect with colleagues. Please Note: Placing your work on ResearchGate or Academia is not a replacement for depositing a copy of your research in WIRE.

There is a requirement for you to deposit the legal copy of your paper in WIRE and then link to that on networking sites such as ResearchGate.

WIRE has recently been re-developed to ensure that it represents the changes in the communities in the University, from Schools to Faculties, as well as the development of Research Institutes. It now has improved features, which will enable you to have your work showcased within a Research profile. Further improvements are also planned.

 

Submitting your work to WIRE

You can submit final peer-reviewed drafts (post-prints) and published versions of journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, reports, and theses. (Please check the SHERPA/RoMEO database for the version and embargo rules of the journal in which your article is published). 

 

To submit work yourself, you first need to register for an account and then ask the WIRE team at wire@wlv.ac.uk to give you permission to submit to a particular collection.

 

Concerns authors have had:

“I'm worried about plagiarism. Won't this make it easier for someone to pass off my work as their own?”

The reverse is true! Making your thesis available electronically means that powerful online plagiarism detection services can quickly establish if someone else is using your material.

 

Depositing your e-thesis makes it easier for other researchers to use and cite your work legitimately, using academic conventions. 

 

Further Information 

To find out more about WIRE, or Open Access publishing options generally, please see http://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/research/ or email us at: lisliaison@wlv.ac.uk  .

 

Useful Links

The Finch Report (2012) : The report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings – the Finch Group. This report commissioned by the Government discusses approaches to improve open access to publicly funded research and scholarly publications.  

 

Research Councils UK: The RCUK adopted an open access policy towards research outputs (articles and conference papers funded by a UK research council), on 1 April 2013, developed from the recommendations of the Finch Report. 

 

LIS’s Skills for Researchers Open Access Guide