Subject-specific repositories between professionalization and networking with the research community

"The workshop "Subject Repositories Between Technical and Organizational Professionalization and Networking with Their Research Communities" was conceived at the initiative of participants in the digital focus group "Subject Repositories ," which convened in May 2022. At these virtual meetings, which take place approximately every two months, operators of subject repositories come together to exchange information on current developments, support one another, and plan joint projects. At one of these meetings, following the call for papers for the Open Access Days 2024, the idea of ​​submitting a workshop arose. Based on findings from recent studies such as the COAR Repository Survey ( Shearer et al., 2023 ) and the Allianz Study on Open Access Infrastructures ( Biela et al., 2024 ), the workshop was intended to create a space for discussion and exchange on best practices for the further development of subject (and institutional) repositories. For this purpose, several thematic working groups were to be formed. The range of topics ranged from "networking with the disciplinary research community" to "hosting and software" and "governance issues" to "metadata and workflows." The 16 participants themselves selected the topics for work in distributed working groups at the beginning of the workshop. The three most popular topics were determined using Mentimeter voting, and small working groups were then formed, each led by two moderators. For methodological and didactic purposes, pinboards and moderation cards were used, which were clustered thematically and documented using photographs. The most important findings from the three working groups are summarized in this blog post. The workshop begins with key findings from the BMBF-funded project "PRO OAR DE incl. COAR Repository Survey" (Marcel Wrzesinski) and the "Alliance Study on Open Access Infrastructures" (Olaf Siegert)...."