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espace at MMU >
About
Getting Started |
 | Welcome |
This guide will introduce you to the core functions of
e-space, assist you with finding and submitting content as well as
personalising and navigating the site.
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| What is e-space? |
The e-space
service is a
digital archive or repository. It is intended to capture, store and preserve
the research output of Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and to make it
available to the global research community via the World Wide Web through Open Access
protocols.
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| How
is e-space organised? |
Mapping to the structure of MMU as closely as possible,
e-space is organised into a hierarchical set of communities, sub-communities and collections:
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Communities form the top layer: research institutes,
faculties and central departments.
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Sub-communities: a division of the community that might
include schools and departments.
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Collections: groups of related documents.
For example, "Faculties" is a community within e-space.
Within this community the sub-community for the Faculty of Humanities, Law and
Social Science can be found. Within this sub-community are several collections
including the Department of English and Discussion Papers in Economics.
Each community, sub-community and collection has its own
home page which contains information about that community, sub-community or
collection. In addition, some collections may have access restrictions as to
who is allowed to submit to the collection.
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| So what can I find here? |
You will find items of research by members of academic
and research
staff at MMU. Work by undergraduate students is not included. These items include journal articles
(both pre- and post-print), book chapters, working papers, conference papers,
project reports, datasets and multi-media files. Where
available, you will be able to access the full-text of items. If the full-text is not
available, usually due to copyright restrictions, then metadata (information
about the item) will be available; this metadata might point to a publisher's
version of the item.
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| Do I need to register to use e-space? |
You do not need to register to search, browse and view
the content of e-space. However, if you wish to submit an item, view
restricted items or sign up for e-mail alerts of newly-added content you
need to register by completing a simple registration process. Note that only
members of MMU are able to submit content.
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Using Search |
| How do I search? |
| There are two ways of finding content: searching via a
keyword or browsing. The basic search box appears at the top right hand
corner. Enter your search term and see what you get!
You will also
see that there is an additional search box on each community's home
page. This search box will allow you to carry out a simple search at
that level of the hierarchy or any level below it using a drop-down
menu.
Here are a few tips on searching:
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| Terms searched in the general keyword search box |
The terms(s) entered in the search box will be searched against the title, author, abstract, series, sponsor and identifier fields of each item's record.
As well as this, where available, the full text of PDFs, Microsoft Word
documents and rich text files (RTFs) will also be searched.
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| Stop words |
Stop words are words that appear frequently but have no
bearing on the outcome of the search; they have no added value and are ignored
by the e-space search engine. Therefore, you do not need to include them in
your search. Typically, stop words are:
"a", "and" , "are" , "as" , "at" , "be" , "but" , "by" , "for" , "if" , "in" , "into",
"is" ,"it" ,"no" , "not" , "of" , "on" , "or" , "such", "the" , "to" , "was"
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| Truncation |
By using an asterisk (*) after a word stem to denote the
root of the word, all words containing that root will be picked up. So,
select*
will retrieve records containing selects, selector, selection, selecting etc
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| Stemming |
e-space automatically expands words with common endings to include plurals, past tenses ...etc.
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| Phrases |
To search using multiple words as a phrase, put quotation marks ("") around that phrase, for example:
"organisational change".
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| Exact word match |
Put a minus (-) sign before a word if you do not wish
that word to appear in the search results. Alternatively, you can use NOT.
This can limit your search to eliminate unwanted hits. For instance, in the
search:
training-cat or training NOT cat, you will get items containing the word
"training", except those that also contain the word "cat".
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| Eliminate items with unwanted words |
Put a plus (+) sign before a word if it MUST appear in the search result. For instance, if the word "training" is optional, but the word "dog" must be in the result you would use:
+dog training
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| Boolean searching |
The following Boolean operators can be used to combine
terms. Note that they must be CAPITALIZED!
AND limits searches to find items containing all words or
phrases combined with this operator. For example:
cats AND dogs
will retrieve all items that contain BOTH the words "cats" and "dogs".
OR enlarges searches to find items containing any of the
words or phrases surrounding this operator. For example:
cats OR dogs
will retrieve all items that contain EITHER the words "cats" or "dogs".
NOT excludes items containing the word following this
operator, e.g.
training NOT cat
will retrieve all items that contain the word "training" EXCEPT those also
containing the word "cat". Parentheses can be used in the search query to
group search terms into sets, and operators can then be applied to the whole
set, e.g.
(cats OR dogs) AND (training OR discipline)
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| Advanced search |
Advanced searching can be
accessed by clicking on the link underneath the basic search box. The advanced
search page allows you to specify the fields you wish to search, and to
combine these searches with the Boolean AND, OR or NOT. You can restrict your
search to a community by clicking on the arrow to the right of the top box and
choose from the drop down menu. If
you want your search to encompass all content in the site then leave that box
in the default position. Select the field to search in the left hand column
and enter the word or phrase you are searching in the right hand column. You
can select the Boolean operator to combine searches by clicking on the arrow
to the right of the "AND" box.
Note: You must use the input boxes in order. If you leave the first one blank
your search will not work.
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Submitting Content |
| What kind of content should I submit? |
Institutional repositories are often thought to be exclusively created for pre- and post-print research articles. However, whilst individual communities may have their own specific submission policies you should submit any of your research output that is relevant to your subject. This could include published articles, technical reports, conference papers, data sets, multi-media files and eventually theses.
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| Why should I submit content? |
Research has shown that work published in Open Access institutional repositories can gain up to 300% 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. 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.
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How do I get my research into e-space? |
| There are two ways to get your research into
e-space. Repository staff can deposit the work on your behalf, or you can
complete the process yourself. This latter method is known as self-archiving.
Note that only members of MMU are able to submit content to e-space. If you
would like repository staff to archive material on your behalf, e-mail your
work to the e-space team at
e-space@mmu.ac.uk and the work will be completed for you. To speed up the
process, we ask that you include information about author(s), title, title of
journal, year, volume and page numbers if known.
Alternatively, you can deposit your work using the submission process
detailed in this guide.
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How do I go about self-archiving my work? |
| The submission process can be entered
through "My e-space" provided you have already logged in, or via the
"Submit" link, both of which are on the top navigation bar. Alternatively, use the button
on the relevant home page. The process of submitting items into
e-space is simple. Select the collection you wish to submit to, enter
the required information about the item (the metadata), upload the
file(s) and agree to the deposit licence.
When
you choose to enter the submission process, you are presented with a
drop-down list of available collections. If the collection you wish to
submit to is not listed contact the
e-space team
or use the
feedback form.
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How much metadata should be entered? |
| Enter as much metadata (information about the
item) as possible. The fields you submit will
create the metadata used for both internal and external searching. Therefore
the more fields you fill out, the easier it will be for people to find your
work.
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How do I know if I am allowed to submit an article that
has already been published? |
Publisher policies relating to copyright, Open
Access and self-archiving are listed on the Romeo database, which can be
accessed from the first page of the submission process. Alternatively, the
database can be accessed at
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php. If you are unsure of the copyright
position of any article, please contact the
e-space team and we will investigate further.
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What kind of files can I submit? How many can I submit? |
We accept any kind of digital
file and you can upload as many files as you need to: we are also able to
convert files into PDF format. File formats are assigned different recognition
levels that correspond to how well we are able to support that format in the
long term. Supported files are considered to be preservable either because the
current format is considered to be one that will always be able to be read, or
that it will be easily migrated or emulated by current technologies. Known
files are likely to be preserved in their current format, or that are easily
migratable to a format more suited to long-term digital preservation. Unknown
files will be preserved in their original format, but may not be readable if
the software readers for that format become obsolete.
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How soon after submission can I view an item? |
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In
most cases, the submission must go through the workflow process before it is
made live. The submission will be reviewed to ensure it is suitable for
submission and to check and edit the metadata if necessary. Once the workflow
has been completed the submission will be made live within e-space.
The item will be assigned a unique identifier (Handle) and be available to
view immediately after the workflow process has been completed. This
means that it will be instantly available for harvesting by Open Access
compliant search engines such as
OAIster and
Google. It may be a few hours before your submission is indexed for internal full text searching. It will,
however, be possible to search for the key metadata fields. If you require any
assistance self-archiving your work, don't hesitate to contact the
e-space team.
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