Jisc will soon be releasing the latest version of Jisc Monitor Local. It brings with it some small but essential changes since the previous release, in the spirit of Agile development, but the service has changed considerably since it went live some years ago. For those unaware of Jisc Monitor, it is actually two distinct but interrelated services: Monitor Local and Monitor UK. Regarding the former, it is a system which enables institutions to record data relating to the publication of open access outputs by their academics, including both ‘Gold’ and ‘Green’ publication routes, which can then be used for reporting to funders, such as COAF and UKRI. Monitor UK presents APC (article processing charge) data from across the UK in the form of a number of easy-to-use reports. These will enable institutions and funders to explore and evaluate UK cost and compliance data relating to open access publishing. This blog post only substantially focuses on Monitor Local.
Both systems require institutions to “sign” a participation agreement through the Jisc Collections’ Licence Subscriptions Manager. The service is also free to all HEI who are Jisc members. Monitor Local can simply be accessed using the institutions’ UK Federation log-in details (Shibboleth), so the data collection is secure and complies with GDPR standards:
As stated above, Monitor Local is a system to help institutions track their research outputs – the publication details, stages of the publication process; a compliance checker, clearly showing whether a particular output has met the required funder criteria; and most importantly, a system to manage the costs of APCs and all other costs associated with open access publishing: budgets, grants and invoices. With it, institutions can upload a range of data for helping them to understand and monitor the open access status of the publications, as well as their APC spend. There are a number of tabs for adding information about their researchers, their respective grants, invoice collection, and budgets. Users are then able to put together reports for COAF and UKRI in the form of a CSV file for export.
Academic outputs are the core part of this system and each record can be conveniently linked to any of the institution’s people records, grants and budgets that have been logged on Monitor. A person record, for example, would be set up for anyone that an institution wanted to be able to link to an output – authors, investigators, and PhD students – ostensibly anyone who contributed to the creation of that output. By creating a record, the person’s details are stored centrally and institutions can link them to as many different outputs as they wish; there is also a field for ORCID details to be recorded, too.
The system, itself, is increasingly easy to use and we’ve carefully considered the user-interface when designing the look and feel of the service. We also work closely with our Monitor Local users when we make service enhancements to ensure the system meets their needs. If you’d like to schedule a demonstration of the system, please get in touch: help@jisc.ac.uk. If a significant number of institutions are interested, we can also schedule a webinar to show how Jisc Monitor works!