Outstanding Academic Papers by Students (OAPS)

The Outstanding Academic Papers by Students (OAPS) project was first started by Run Run Shaw Library at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) in 2005 as one of its Digital Library Initiatives and Institutional Repository (IR) projects. The project aims to collect and preserve in digital format high-quality student works for the benefit of students as well as the University community. Through the project, we hope to help students acquire proper research and written skills, and instill in them academic integrity and respect for intellectual property. We also hope to build up a pool of exemplary works and share it with other partner institutions to promote wider readership. The scope of collection includes term papers, term projects, reports, case studies, research output, and final year projects from all courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Accepted student works are archived and made accessible in the OAPS collections (http://www.cityu.edu.hk/lib/digital/oaps), which is stored in the Library’s IR along with the Final Year Projects, CityU Electronic Theses & Dissertations, and Students’ External Awards. Through this central platform, students’ works are assigned with permanent identifiers which guarantee perpetual access and can be harvested easily by major internet search engines and data harvesters, thus promoting a global-wide readership. The OAPS project currently involves a number of partner institutions, including Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), Feng Chia University (Taiwan), Kansai University (Japan), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), National United University (Taiwan), National Quemoy University (Taiwan), Seoul National University (Korea), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (PRC), Tsinghua University (PRC), University of Macau (PRC), University of Southern California (USA), Waseda University (Japan) and Xiamen University (PRC). OAPS will continue to expand its scale and reach out to more local and overseas institutions.

Each year, a Certificate Awarding Ceremony is held in recognition of the outstanding works of students. Faculty members, family and friends of the award-winning students gathered together at the Ceremony to share the joy of this memorable occasion. Students also take this opportunity to share their learning and research experiences with their peers. An annual OAPS Task Force Meeting will be organized after the Ceremony in which the partner institutions will meet to report and discuss on the development plan of the project.