Institutional Repositories – the state of the art

Supporting education and research

Institutional Repositories – the state of the art

Rachel Bruce, JISC Development Group,

Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries

New Forms of Information Supply, 1 March 2005


Structure

What is JISC Why OA Definitions – Institutional Repositories (IRs) and state

of the art Activity – JISC and others Impact of IRs on stakeholders


What is JISC?

Joint Information Systems Committee – (JISC) – funded by the UK further and higher education funding councils.

Top sliced grant from universities and colleges, £60 – 90 M per year.

Facilitates the use of ICT in further and higher education through development projects, services, licensing content collections for the sector.– SuperJANET, ATHENS – shibboleth, Licensed collections,

Data centres and services e.g. MIMAS, AHDS, RDN, Advisory services e.g. JISC Legal, TecDIS, development in e-L, e-R – underpinned by middleware and resource discovery services


e-Le

arn

ing

e-R

ese

arch

e-A

dm

inistra

tion

e-Resources

Information Environment

Middleware

Network

Outreach & Embedding

Committees & Consultation

ServicesDevelopment Programmes


Why is JISC is interested in OA?

Aim Two JISC strategy: To provide advice to institutions to enable them to make economic, efficient and legally compliant use of ICT, respecting both the individual’s and corporate rights and responsibilities.

Improving the effectiveness of scholarly

communication in support of research, learning and teaching, especially through sustainable content management.

Representing the needs of learning and research – increased access.


Relevant JISC activities

Journal Negotiation – NESLi 2

Business Models Study - Rightscom

Open Access Initiative

FAIR Programme

New Digital Repositories Programme -<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=funding_circular3_05http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=funding_circular3_05>


“state of the art?”

1. That IRs are the state of the art in terms of OA publishing. Are they state of the art?

2. What the state of the art is – how far developed are IRs. What state are they in?

In short:

1. IRs are part of OA provision, they are not the whole picture.

2. IRs are reasonably developed but far from comprehensive and definitions are not yet clear – still defining the landscape.


Definition of an IR

A repository that is institution wide – not subject focused.

Commonly applied to e-print repositories (post and pre prints), however increasingly the definition is becoming more broad or perhaps more accurately a series of definitions exist.

Repositories are an intersection of interest for different communities of practice: digital libraries, research, learning, e-science, publishing, records management, preservation.

Motivation for focusing on repositories differs somewhat, from enhanced access to resources, to new modes of publication and peer review, to data sharing (re-use of research data and learning objects), to corporate information management (records management and content management systems), to preservation of digital resources.


Some useful parameters

What makes a repository different from otherdigital collections?

Heery and Anderson (2005) Content is deposited in a repository, whether by a

content creator, owner or third party on their behalf. The repository architecture manages content as well

as metadata. The repository offers a minimum set of basic services

e.g. put, get, search, access control. The repository must be sustainable and trusted, well-

supported and well managed.

<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_digital_repositories>


Scholarly Communications

Many but not all support open access.

OA repositories can be defined as:

The repository must provide open access to its content (unless there are legal constraints).

The repository must provide open access to its metadata for harvesting.

Purposes of presentation mainly refer to IRs as repositories that hold research output, focus on e-prints and support OA and OAI-PMH.


Why have an IR?

Institutions see them as a way to showcase their output

Enable ease of access to research outputs Institutional record of research output Link e-prints

to other working papers and datasets within an institution

Part of OA, therefore participating in the delivery of a solution that helps to increase access and recognises the institutions part in the publication process – but is supplementary to current publishing practice

Tools to support researchers – rapid dissemination, manage publication lists

NOT a publication house.


What state are IRs in?

2004 has seen rapid growth – now around 40 IRs

– Figures from SHERPA – January 2005 – based on IR being a repository that receives research output from the spread of subject-disciplines at the institution:

Out of the top 20 research institutions 15 already have IRs, others are being planned.

Russell Group - 16 out of 19 have IRs operating 1994 group - 8 out of 16 have an IR.


What state are IRs in?

Patchy coverage within institutions and across institutions.

Charles Phelps – Rochester University, talks about the need to reach a ‘tipping point’ in terms of critical mass and subject coverage – this would take a lot of coordination, would this ever happen without publishers? Probably not.

Need to encourage deposit – this is not easy. Associated metadata – quality? Workflow and process issues need defined. Costs associated in setting it up, assessing software

and solutions – relatively immature. IRs are NOT in a stable and easy to navigate state,

‘chaotic’ ?


What might improve their state?

RCUK position statement, policies to mandate deposit, OA declarations - may help…

Romeo, Sherpa database DOAR, OAIster, eprints.uk Building services on top of IRs – subject access,

communities, quality control The broadening of the appeal beyond R, for instance

institutional policies in information management

Holland – DARE which is SURF funded has supported the set up of repositories, more comprehensive. – but research output is global so you still need other services on top of IRs to deliver a meaningful experience.

USA – institutions vary greatly – less likely to have a government approach but are getting on with it.

Australia –The ARROW project will identify and test software or solutions to support best practice institutional digital repositories. Funded by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education Science and Training, under the Research Information Infrastructure Framework for Australian Higher Education.


Impacts

Authors – quick dissemination, increased access and impact, record of research, access to their output even if they move.– But possibly extra work – need to deposit and understand a

new system? Librarians – helps to give them a new role within a university,

encouraging deposit, IPR, metadata & policy.

Publishers – period of change – can seem to be a threat, however evidence shows that publishing and OA IRs can co-exist e.g. arXiv – physics archive, still strong physics subscriptions American Physical Society and Institute of Physics Publishers.

Most of the issues that make the current IR landscape chaotic relate to value added features that publishers have always delivered so there appears to be room for publishers to work to offer some of the ‘services on top’ – in terms of technical services and communities, international dissemination and peer review.

Journals give a time based view of an area, issues based, community based, adverts etc.

ProQuest and Biomed central – already offer repository services. Thomson ISI trialing services. Cross Ref – discovery across IRs.


Are IRs state of the art in OA?

Draw your own conclusions!


The future

IRs will mean that different formats and business models might be required. The added value and skills of publishers will still be necessary e.g. overlay journals.

Repositories are just a new technology (some might say buzz word), like the e-learning to teaching e-L still needs the skills of teachers.

There will be a need for an integrated architecture to support e-prints and journals and institutions and publishers can be partners in this.

Digital repositories, have and will continue to move beyond e-prints – learning objects, research datasets, administration

Federations of repositories rather than single IRs, run by department, other bodies, organisations etc.

Interoperability, repository models, standards etc. Digital repositories offer a ‘nexus’ point where many key issues to

information management and supply in a digital environment can be addressed.

Business models, costs not clear, uncertainty in terms of what might be the successful model for OA and for maintaining repositories.

Google?


Far from “sate of the art”

JISC Call for Proposals in Digital Repositories via higher and further education institutions– bids due 7 April 2005. – to assess and understand community needs;– to assess the cultural and practical issues

effecting the implementation and usage of digital repositories in institutions (for example, IPR, provenance, quality assurance and user requirements);

– to evaluate repository specifications, software and tools and to feed into their future development;

– to scope a common national repository service infrastructure;

– to define repository functional components and to develop and synthesise frameworks;

– to develop guidelines and exemplars for the implementation of relevant standards, specifications and good practices in the repository area.


The Vision

“While early implementers of institutional repositories have chosen different paths to begin populating their repositories and to build campus community acceptance, support, and participation…a mature and fully realised institutional repository will contain the intellectual works of faculty and students – both research and teaching materials – and also documentation of the activities of the institution itself in the form of records of events and performance and of the on-going intellectual life of the institution. It will house experimental and observational data captured by members of the institution that support their scholarly activities. “

Cliff Lynch, ARL – bi-monthly report, 2003, No.226, 1-7


Further Information

JISC Website http://www.jisc.ac.uk

Delivery, management and access model for E-prints and open access journals within further and higher education. 2004http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/ACF1E88.pdf

Phase 2 invitation for support in transitioning to open access http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name =funding_open_access2

Eprints and Open Access Journals Service Models Study http://www.jisc.ac.uk/journals_work.html

Call for projects in digital repositories http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=funding_circular3_05


Thank you!

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Institutional Repositories – the state of the art

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