Repositories play their part in institutions - Institutional repositories - Research Information

"Institutional repositories (IRs) play a key role in open-access policies and programmes – and in showcasing an institution’s activities. ‘Institutional repositories are evolving; initially they were local repositories for the scholarly output of an institution – primarily documents like theses, dissertations, and journal publications. However, modern IRs need to support a broader range of content, including multimedia and research datasets (which can be large and complex),’ noted David Wilcox product manager for Fedora with DuraSpace. ‘Additionally, IRs are starting to participate in the world of linked open data, including external authorities for authors and subjects, as well as the capability to openly share local resources in a standardised way.’ For Irene Kamotsky, director of strategic initiatives at Bepress: ‘The two themes we see are low-hanging-fruit: digital content that is already in hand or easy to get and has few copyright issues; and content that is tied to a strategic goal or high-level initiative at the institution. She noted that ‘previously published articles are still a core collection at many institutions, but these other types of projects drive more readership and more engagement on and off campus.’ IRs today often need to support research management functions, gathering materials for research assessment. Leslie Carr, a professor in the Web Science Institute of the UK’s University of Southampton and one of the team behind the open-source eprints software commented, ‘With the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), for example, there is particular reporting required and we have to add in extra fields and tighten up the metadata – but, REF or no REF, a repository needs to tell the story of the institution.’  Preservation is an important component of IRs too. ‘The primary use case is the long- term preservation of digital assets,’ commented Samantha Fritz, interim project and community manager of Islandora Foundation. ‘Many institutions use IRs to bring awareness to unique materials and content within archives and special collections. IRs are a great opportunity for an expansion in outreach as individuals across the world can access digital objects that had, in the past, largely been limited to the traditional physical setting' ..."