Marine Institute Open Access Repository Attracts Worldwide Audience to Marine Research in Ireland
abernard102@gmail.com 2012-05-28
Summary:
“The Marine Institute is the agency responsible for Marine Research, Technology
Development and Innovation (RTDI) in Ireland. Their aim is to examine and realise the
economic potential of Ireland's marine resources, to protect Ireland’s marine
environment through research and environmental monitoring, and to promote the
sustainable development of the marine industry through strategic funding
programmes and essential scientific services. The Marine Institute produces an
extensive range of quality research such as postgraduate theses, journal articles, reports and conference proceedings. In the past, their research was stored in many formats and locations, which created challenges when trying to gain access to such research. Since January 2008 the European Research Council requires that all peer reviewed publications from ERC funded research projects be accessible through an institutional repository and meet the requirements set out by the EU’s FP7 mandate. Following on from this, since late 2008 the HEA, SFI, IRCSET and HRB have specified an Open Access mandate for any research they fund. Central Solutions helped in designing and implementing the Marine Institute’s Open Access Repository (OAR), translating their precise requirements into a fully functional solution. Central Solutions identified DSpace software as the platform best suited to satisfy the needs of the Marine Institute while facilitating compliance with openaccess standards such as OAI-PMH and OAI-ORE. DSpace is a freely available, open source, digital repository software product jointly developed by MIT and HP... The success of the Marine Institute’s OAR is evident as the repository now holds over 650 publications and is continuing to grow. A significant feature of the repository is that performance statistics for each publication are now available enabling you to see where in the world people are viewing each publication, and how often it is viewed/downloaded. The Marine Institute has had over 9,000 visits from more than 124 countries around the world since its recent launch, thereby helping the Marine Institute to achieve its’ aim of showcasing research to an international audience...”