The repository of last resort? Exploring the relevance of institutional data repositories | ID: f4752r575 | ScholarsArchive@OSU

Abstract:  The repository landscape has evolved much in the last couple decades. We now have federal guidance that sets a standard for repository quality and certification processes to communicate the reliability of a repository to users. With well-established domain agnostic repositories that offer a breadth of services and that are generally recognized as good quality repositories (e.g. the GREI repositories) it is appropriate to ask ourselves what the role of institutional data repositories is in the repository landscape. What resources should we devote and to what extent and which services should we prioritize? We hypothesize that in spite of the resource requirements, institutional repositories have a niche in the repository ecosystem and in some cases fill a need that is not covered by other existing agnostic repositories. Our research study aims to define what this niche is at Oregon State University (OSU) and to help us determine OSU Libraries’ future data repository strategy. We expect that the conclusions will be applicable to other institutions, especially high research activity institutions. We will report on the results of a questionnaire we sent to 533 researchers from our institution who deposited a dataset in a discipline agnostic repository in the last five years. The survey asked what strategies they used to choose a repository, and about their experience depositing data. We will also present preliminary results of in-depth interviews with several of the responders. We will explore the type of user that benefits the most from the service of institutional data repositories and will explain why we believe that the presence of institutional data repositories contributes to making the repository ecosystem more resilient.