Institutional repository

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An institutional repository (IR) is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. [1] Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published works to increase their visibility and collaboration with other academics. [2] However, most of these outputs produced by universities are not effectively accessed and shared by researchers and other stakeholders. [3] As a result academics should be involved in the implementation and development of an IR project so that they can learn the benefits and purpose of building an IR. [4]

Contents

An institutional repository has been defined as "a set of services that a university offers to members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members." [5] For a university, this includes materials such as monographs, eprints of academic journal articles—both before (preprints) and after (postprints) undergoing peer review—as well as electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). An institutional repository might also include other digital assets generated by academics, such as datasets, administrative documents, course notes, learning objects, academic posters or conference proceedings. Deposit of material in an institutional repository is sometimes mandated by an institution. [6]

Some of the main objectives for having an institutional repository are to provide open access to institutional research output by self-archiving in an open access repository, to create global visibility for an institution's scholarly research, and to store and preserve other institutional digital assets, including less formally published grey literature such as theses, working papers or technical reports.

Functions

Institutional repositories can be classified as a type of digital library. Institutional repositories perform the main functions of digital libraries by collecting, classifying, cataloging, curating, preserving, and providing access to digital content.

Institutional repositories enable researchers to self-archive their research output and can improve the visibility, usage and impact of research conducted at an institution. [7] [8] Other functions of an institutional repository include knowledge management, research assessment, and open access to scholarly research. [8]

In 2003, the functions of an institutional repository were described by Clifford Lynch in relation to universities. He stated that:

"... a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution." [7]

The content of an institutional repository depends on the focus of the institution. Higher education institutions conduct research across multiple disciplines, thus research from a variety of academic subjects. Examples of such institutional repositories include the MIT Institutional Repository. A disciplinary repository is subject specific. It holds and provides access to scholarly research in a particular discipline. While there can be disciplinary repositories for one institution, disciplinary repositories are frequently not tied to a specific institution. The PsyDok disciplinary repository, for example, holds German-language research in psychology, while SSOAR is an international social science full-text server. [7] Content included in an institutional repository can be both digitized and born-digital. [9]

Open-access repositories

Institutional repositories that provide access to research to users outside the institutional community are one of the recommended ways to achieve the open access vision described in the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access. This is sometimes referred to as the self-archiving or "green" route to open access.

Developing an institutional repository

Steps in the development of an institutional repository include choosing a platform [10] and defining metadata practices. [11] Designing an IR requires working with faculty to identify the type of content the library needs to support [12] Marketing and promoting the Institutional repository is important to enhance access and increase the visibility of the researchers. Libraries will also need to target their marketing efforts to different groups of stakeholders. They may generate faculty interest by describing how an IR can support research or improve future findability of articles [13]

Software

Most institutional repository software platforms can use OAI-PMH to harvest metadata. [14] For example, DSpace supports OAI-PMH. [15]

A 2014 survey commissioned by Duraspace found that 72% of respondents indicated that their institutional repository is hosted by a third party. [16]

Aggregators

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) states in its manifesto that "Each individual repository is of limited value for research: the real power of Open Access lies in the possibility of connecting and tying together repositories, which is why we need interoperability. In order to create a seamless layer of content through connected repositories from around the world, open access relies on interoperability, the ability for systems to communicate with each other and pass information back and forth in a usable format. Interoperability allows us to exploit today's computational power so that we can aggregate, data mine, create new tools and services, and generate new knowledge from repository content." [17]

Interoperability is achieved in the world of institutional repositories by using protocols such as OAI-PMH. This allows search engines and open access aggregators, such as BASE, CORE and Unpaywall, [18] to index repository metadata and content and provide value-added services on top of this content. [19]

The Digital Commons Network aggregates by discipline some 500 institutional repositories running on the Bepress Digital Commons platform. It includes more than two million full-text objects.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Archives Initiative</span> Informal organisation

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) was an informal organization, in the circle around the colleagues Herbert Van de Sompel, Carl Lagoze, Michael L. Nelson and Simeon Warner, to develop and apply technical interoperability standards for archives to share catalogue information (metadata). The group got together in the late late 1990s and was active for around twenty years. OAI coordinated in particular three specification activities: OAI-PMH, OAI-ORE and ResourceSync. All along the group worked towards building a "low-barrier interoperability framework" for archives containing digital content to allow people harvest metadata. Such sets of metadata are since then harvested to provide "value-added services", often by combining different data sets.

CiteSeerX is a public search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers, primarily in the fields of computer and information science.

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a protocol developed for harvesting metadata descriptions of records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives. An implementation of OAI-PMH must support representing metadata in Dublin Core, but may also support additional representations.

A digital asset is anything that exists only in digital form and comes with a distinct usage right or distinct permission for use. Data that do not possess those rights are not considered assets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DSpace</span> Repository software package

DSpace is an open source repository software package typically used for creating open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital content. While DSpace shares some feature overlap with content management systems and document management systems, the DSpace repository software serves a specific need as a digital archives system, focused on the long-term storage, access and preservation of digital content. The optional DSpace registry lists almost three thousand repositories all over the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fedora Commons</span>

Fedora is a digital asset management (DAM) content repository architecture upon which institutional repositories, digital archives, and digital library systems might be built. Fedora is the underlying architecture for a digital repository, and is not a complete management, indexing, discovery, and delivery application. It is a modular architecture built on the principle that interoperability and extensibility are best achieved by the integration of data, interfaces, and mechanisms as clearly defined modules.

Perpetual access is the stated continuous access of licensed electronic material after is it no longer accessible through an active paid subscription either through the library or publisher action. In many cases, the two parties involved in the license agree that it is necessary for the license to retain access to these materials after the license has lapsed. Other terms for perpetual access or similar trains of thought are 'post-cancellation access' and 'continuing access.'

Digital Commons is a commercial, hosted institutional repository platform owned by RELX Group. This hosted service, licensed by bepress, is used by over 600 academic institutions, healthcare centers, public libraries, and research centers to showcase their scholarly output and special collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public Knowledge Project</span> Metadata reservation project for e-journals

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative that is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making this possible. It is a partnership between the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, the University of Pittsburgh, Ontario Council of University Libraries, the California Digital Library and the School of Education at Stanford University. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BASE (search engine)</span> Academic search engine

BASE is a multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly internet resources, created by Bielefeld University Library in Bielefeld, Germany. It is based on free and open-source software such as Apache Solr and VuFind. It harvests OAI metadata from institutional repositories and other academic digital libraries that implement the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), and then normalizes and indexes the data for searching. In addition to OAI metadata, the library indexes selected web sites and local data collections, all of which can be searched via a single search interface.

The Redalyc project is a bibliographic database and a digital library of Open Access journals, supported by the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México with the help of numerous other higher education institutions and information systems.

Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection, and archiving of digital assets. Digital curation establishes, maintains, and adds value to repositories of digital data for present and future use. This is often accomplished by archivists, librarians, scientists, historians, and scholars. Enterprises are starting to use digital curation to improve the quality of information and data within their operational and strategic processes. Successful digital curation will mitigate digital obsolescence, keeping the information accessible to users indefinitely. Digital curation includes digital asset management, data curation, digital preservation, and electronic records management.

AGRIS is a global public domain database with more than 12 million structured bibliographical records on agricultural science and technology. It became operational in 1975 and the database was maintained by Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development, and its content is provided by more than 150 participating institutions from 65 countries. The AGRIS Search system, allows scientists, researchers and students to perform sophisticated searches using keywords from the AGROVOC thesaurus, specific journal titles or names of countries, institutions, and authors.

Invenio is an open source software framework for large-scale digital repositories that provides the tools for management of digital assets in an institutional repository and research data management systems. The software is typically used for open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital content and as a digital library.

An open repository or open-access repository is a digital platform that holds research output and provides free, immediate and permanent access to research results for anyone to use, download and distribute. To facilitate open access such repositories must be interoperable according to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Search engines harvest the content of open access repositories, constructing a database of worldwide, free of charge available research. Data repositories are the cornerstone for FAIR data practices and are used expeditiously within the scientific community.

Islandora is a free and open-source software digital repository system based on Drupal and integrating with additional applications, including Fedora Commons. It is open source software. Islandora was originally developed at the University of Prince Edward Island by the Robertson Library and is now maintained by the Islandora Foundation, which has a mission to, "promote collaboration through transparency and consensus building among Islandora community members, and to steward their shared vision for digital curation features through a body of software and knowledge."

ResCarta Toolkit is an open source software package used to create open access repositories for local history and published digital content. ResCarta Toolkit focuses on the use of open standard file formats and metadata standards to create archives that are sustainable over time. It includes software for creation of digital objects, indexing of metadata and content, display tools and checksum validation.

OurResearch, formerly known as ImpactStory, is a nonprofit organization that creates and distributes tools and services for libraries, institutions and researchers. The organization follows open practices with their data, code, and governance. OurResearch is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and Arcadia Fund.

MyCoRe is an open source repository software framework for building disciplinary or institutional repositories, digital archives, digital libraries, and scientific journals. The software is developed at various German university libraries and computer centers. Although most MyCoRe web applications are located in Germany, there are English-language applications, such as "The International Treasury of Islamic Manuscripts" at the University of Cambridge (UK).

The Open Knowledge Repository is the official open-access repository of the World Bank and features research content about development. It was launched in 2012, alongside the World Bank's Open Access Policy and its adoption of the Creative Commons Attribution license for all research and knowledge products that it publishes, which collectively made the World Bank the first international organization to completely embrace open access. The repository collects the intellectual output of the World Bank in digital form, disseminates it, and preserves it long-term.

References

  1. ↑ Crow, Raym (2002). "The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper". ARL (223): 1–4.
  2. ↑ Ukwoma, Scholastica C.; Dike, V. W. (2017). "Academics' Attitudes toward the Utilization of Institutional Repositories in Nigerian Universities". Portal: Libraries and the Academy. 17 (1): 17–32. doi:10.1353/pla.2017.0002. ISSN   1530-7131. S2CID   64042164.
  3. ↑ Safdar, Muhammad (2021-01-01). "Students' Perception about Institutional Repository and Impact of Electronic Contents on their Research: A Pakistani Perspective". Library Philosophy and Practice (E-journal).
  4. ↑ Patowari, Sewali; Barooah, P. (2023-05-15). "Development of information repository(IR) in academic institutions - a study". Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal).
  5. ↑ Lynch, Clifford (2003). "Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age" (PDF). ARL Bimonthly Report (226). Association of Research Libraries. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  6. ↑ Harnad, Steve; McGovern, Nancy (2009). "Topic 4: Institutional repository success is dependent upon mandates". Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 35 (4): 27–31. doi:10.1002/bult.2009.1720350410. hdl: 2027.42/62145 . ISSN   1550-8366.
  7. 1 2 3 Smith, Ina (2015). Open access infrastructure. UNESCO Publishing. p. 7. ISBN   978-92-3-100075-1.
  8. 1 2 Smith, Ina (2015). Open access infrastructure. UNESCO Publishing. p. 20. ISBN   978-92-3-100075-1.
  9. ↑ Smith, Ina (2015). Open access infrastructure. UNESCO Publishing. p. 19. ISBN   978-92-3-100075-1.
  10. ↑ Callicott, Burton B.; Scherer, David; Wesolek, Andrew (2015). Making Institutional Repositories Work. Purdue University Press. p. 1. hdl:20.500.12657/31579. ISBN   978-1-61249-422-7.
  11. ↑ Mering, Margaret (2019-06-14). "Transforming the Quality of Metadata in Institutional Repositories". The Serials Librarian. 76 (1–4): 79–82. doi: 10.1080/0361526X.2019.1540270 . ISSN   0361-526X.
  12. ↑ Marsh, Corrie; Wackerman, Dillon; Stubbs, Jennifer A.W. (2017-05-01). "Creating an Institutional Repository: Elements for Success!". The Serials Librarian. 72 (1–4): 3–6. doi: 10.1080/0361526X.2017.1297587 . ISSN   0361-526X. S2CID   63263227.
  13. ↑ Marsh, Corrie; Wackerman, Dillon; Stubbs, Jennifer A.W. (May 2017). "Creating an Institutional Repository: Elements for Success!". The Serials Librarian. 72 (1–4): 3–6. doi: 10.1080/0361526X.2017.1297587 . ISSN   0361-526X. S2CID   63263227.
  14. ↑ "OAI-PMH Metadata Delivery for Catalogs and Institutional Repositories". EBSCO Connect. 2018. Retrieved 2021-06-12.
  15. ↑ "OAI - DSpace 6.x Documentation - LYRASIS Wiki". wiki.lyrasis.org. Retrieved 2021-06-12.
  16. ↑ "Managing Digital Collections Survey Results". www.dlib.org. Retrieved 2016-05-16.
  17. ↑ "The Case for Interoperability for Open Access Repositories" (PDF). COAR. July 2011. p. 2. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  18. ↑ Dhakal, Kerry (15 April 2019). "Unpaywall". Journal of the Medical Library Association. 107 (2): 286–288. doi:10.5195/jmla.2019.650. PMC   6466485 .
  19. ↑ Knoth, Petr; Zdrahal, Zdenek (2012). "CORE: Three Access Levels to Underpin Open Access". D-Lib Magazine. 18 (11/12). doi: 10.1045/november2012-knoth .

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