The University Research Committee has agreed that the University of Lincoln should move to a position where the deposit of (new) substantive research outputs in the Repository is universal practice, from the beginning of academic year 2010/11. There are many benefits to placing research outputs in a publicly accessible repository, including:

1. Research shows that placing outputs in repositories makes them easily available to other researchers, and significantly increases research impact, including citation rates;
2. This leads to increased visibility and impact of our research, including enhanced performance in the Research Excellence Framework (REF);
3. Automatically generating and updating staff profile pages from information in the Repository.

To support the transition process, the University has engaged a full-time Research Institutional Repository Officer to aid academic staff in depositing their research outputs during the remainder of this academic year. The Library also has staff responsible for checking that deposited outputs comply with relevant copyright and other restrictions, and is able to advise where members of staff are unsure on such issues. These matters will be covered in the training sessions.

Please contact the Research Office if you’d like to know more about the University’s plans for the REF, or contact eprints@lincoln.ac.uk for further information and support on the Repository.