From Data to Decisions: USC Streamlines Its Digital Commons Repository with OA Switchboard

Using standardized, publisher-sourced metadata to efficiently track and analyze institutional publishing

Library at a glance:

• Location: Columbia, South Carolina, USA

• Library type: Large international research and academic university OR Large public research university

• OA Switchboard role: Library participant

• Integration system: Digital Commons

• Primary use case: Enrich and complete Institutional Repository records

The Challenge

The University of South Carolina Library faces growing complexity in connecting research output to the right people and their organization. Scholarly metadata is spread across many different sources, and inconsistencies make it difficult to reconcile and reuse. Ensuring that their Institutional Repository, Digital Commons, is accurate, complete, and up to date requires navigating a diverse and largely non-standardized data landscape.

The Approach

USC leverages OA Switchboard to provide timely, clean metadata from the authoritative source—the publishers themselves—to enrich and complete records in its internal systems. Library staff periodically pull OA Switchboard data, review it, and upload it into the repository.

The quality, breadth, and standardised nature of OA Switchboard publication metadata make this process both efficient and reliable. Metadata is aggregated across large and small publishers, OA and non-OA publications, and all OA models—including APC, non-APC, and transformative agreements. Compared with other sources, OA Switchboard provides richer, more comprehensive, and more timely, actionable information, enabling the library to maintain complete, accurate, and up-to-date repository records.

The Impact

• The Institutional Repository is consistently enriched with authoritative metadata, reducing gaps across internal systems.

• For more than 40 publishers, staff no longer rely on manual spreadsheets, publisher-specific scripts, or third-party sources, saving time and reducing errors.

• Institutional research output in Digital Commons is more complete and up to date, supporting improved analytics, visualization, and reporting.

• Decision-makers gain clearer insights into where and how researchers are publishing, helping to inform open access strategies at an institutional level.

Key Takeaway

By integrating OA Switchboard data into its Institutional Repository (Digital Commons), USC gains clearer insight into institutional publishing activity. Standardized, publisher-sourced metadata from OA Switchboard enables the University of South Carolina to efficiently enrich its repository, reduce manual work, enhance metadata completeness, and power better analytics and institutional decision-making.