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Foreword
The year 2013 marks the eighth anniversary of the Outstanding Academic
Papers by Students (OAPS) project. Initiated by the CityU Library in 2005, the
OAPS project provides students with a quality platform to share their findings
with peers during their academic pursuits and to engage them with the global
community. In addition to the existing academic departments, we are most
delighted to have another three departments joining us for the first time this
year, including the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, the
Department of English, and the Department of Public and Social Administration.
The number of papers received this year has significantly increased by 66%,
and the accumulated number of papers at CityU in the past eight years has
risen to 294 with contributions by 406 students affiliated with 17 academic
departments. It is indeed greatly encouraging for us to see that more excellent
works of students are being recognized.
At CityU, all students have equal opportunities to create, communicate,
curate and cultivate new knowledge in their discovery journeys. As one of
the supporting departments of the University, apart from teaching students
information research skills, the Library also conveys to students the values that
are intrinsic to conducting research, such as using in-text citations, references
& bibliographies and avoiding copyright infringement through conducting
information skills workshops on related topics. Through the OAPS project, the
Library collaborates with the academic departments to collect quality student
papers, preserve them in the Institutional Repository (IR), and make them
accessible worldwide. The OAPS papers are quite popular and well-used by
the scholarly community. The average annual usage rate in 2010/11 was 260
per paper only, but it has recently increased to 560 and 880 respectively during
the last two years. A citation search also reveals that quite a number of CityU
OAPS papers have been cited by scholars and students worldwide.
With the internationalization of the university curriculum, the Library serves as a
bridge linking CityU students with their overseas counterparts. As a consortium
project, the OAPS project helps promote cross-cultural understanding among
students from different regions. An OAPS Portal, http://www.oapsportal.org, has
also been established which aims to facilitate the discovery of the outstanding
academic papers of member institutions, including City University of Hong Kong,
Waseda University, Nanyang Technological University, Tsinghua University,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xiamen University and Feng Chia University.
As of April 2013, 2,278 papers have already been collected. This project helps
to expand readership of student works through institutional exchange and thus
enhances scholarly communication.