A New Information Management Landscape: From Outside-In to Inside-Out | New Roles for the Road Ahead:

"While institutional repositories are now a routine feature of academic libraries, there is ongoing discussion about purpose and scope, incentives for researchers to deposit, and their role within ‘green’ open access. This is not the place for a full treatment, but a couple of points are worth making. First, while most repositories are home to versions of research papers, scope varies across institutions. For example, some repositories may take a ‘campus bibliography’ approach, including links to publisher splash pages. Some repositories may include other categories of material, institutional records or archival materials, for example. Given the lack of standard methods for designating material types and rights information this may make it difficult for an aggregator of repository content to distinguish scholarly material or to determine allowable actions. Second, there is a close connection between repositories and national education and science policy regimes, so the dynamic of development has been differently influenced in different regimes. For example, where there are national research assessment programs in place, institutional interest in repositories may be higher (MacColl, 2010). Shifts in US federal policy with regard to research funding and access to outcomes will have an impact here resulting in a more organized approach to research information management and disclosure...."