Transcript Creating Institutional Repositories

Creating Institutional
Repositories
Stephen Pinfield
Key questions
• What are ‘institutional repositories’?
• Why set them up?
• How can they be set up?
Terminology
• ‘E-print archives’
• ‘Open archives’
• ‘Self archiving’
• ‘Institutional repositories’
‘E-print archives’
• ‘E-prints’ = electronic versions of
research papers and other similar output
• ‘E-print archives’ = online repositories of
this material
• Might contain:
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‘pre-prints’ (pre-referred papers)
‘post-prints’ (post-refereed papers)
conference papers
book chapters
reports
etc.
‘Open archives’
• ‘Open’ = freely accessible, ‘open access’,
and/or
• ‘Open’ = interoperable - Open Archives
Initiative (OAI)*:
– “develops and promotes interoperability
standards that aim to facilitate the efficient
dissemination of content.”
– OAI Metadata Harvesting Protocol
• allows metadata from different archives to be harvested
and collected together in searchable databases
– creates the potential for a global virtual
research archive
* http://www.openarchives.org
‘Self archiving’
• ‘Author self-archiving’
“…an umbrella term often applied to the
electronic posting, without publisher
mediation, of author-supplied
research.”*
• ‘Institution self-archiving’
Institutions may post articles on behalf
of authors
* Raym Crow The case for institutional repositories: a SPARC position paper.
2002. Draft.
Successful archives
• arXiv
– Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science
– Pre-prints and post-prints
• CogPrints
– Cognitive Science
– Pre-prints and post-prints
• RePec
– Economics
– Working papers
• Centralised subject-based archives
Institutional collections?
• Aim: encouraging wider use of eprints
• Institutions have:
– resources to subsidise archive start up
– technical / organisational infrastructures to
support archives
– an interest in disseminating content
‘Institutional repositories’
• Institutional repositories: “digital
collections that preserve and provide
access the the intellectual output of an
institution.”*
• ‘Repository’ avoids the ‘a’ word
• More than just e-prints?
* Raym Crow The case for institutional repositories: a SPARC position
paper. 2002. Draft.
Why institutional e-print
repositories?
• Context
– structural problems in scholarly publishing
– e-print repositories a possible solution
• Benefits
– for the researcher
– for the institution
– for the research community
Context
Structural problems with scholarly publishing
• ‘Impact barriers’
– authors give away their content and want to
achieve impact not income
– want to disseminate research widely
– but publishers want to restrict circulation based on
subscriptions
• ‘Access barriers’
– researchers want easy access to the literature
– but most researchers do not have easy access to
most of the literature
Benefits for the researcher
• Wide dissemination
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– papers more visible
– cited more
Rapid dissemination
Ease of access
Cross-searchable
Value added services
– hit counts on papers
– personalised publications lists
– citation analyses
lowering impact
barriers
lowering access
barriers
Other benefits
• For the institution
– raising profile and prestige of institution
– managing institutional information assets
– accreditation / performance management
e.g. RAE
– long-term cost savings
• For the research community
– ‘frees up’ the communication process
– avoids unnecessary duplication
Common concerns
• Concerns:
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Quality control - particularly peer review
IPR - particularly copyright
Undermining the tried and tested status quo
Work load
• Responses:
– institutional repositories complementary to the
publishing status quo
– help and advice on IPR
– help with administration: ‘the library will do the work’
Installation
• Initial installation relatively straightforward
• E-prints.org software*
– Advantages:
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free
relatively straightforward to install
easily configurable
simple administration procedures
customisable web interface
for the user, searching and browsing easy
OAI compliant
– Disadvantages:
• not flexible - basic workflow difficult to alter
• long-winded self-archiving process
* http://www.eprints.org
Collection management
• Document type
– pre-prints v. post-prints
– authors: staff, students, others?
• Document format
– HTML, PDF, Postscript, RTF, ASCII, etc.
• Digital preservation policy
• Submission procedures
– mediated / DIY?
– file format conversion, depositing e-prints, creation of metadata
• Author permission and licensing terms
– copyright statement
– compliance with publisher copyright terms
• Metadata quality standards
– self-created metadata
– metadata quality and visibility
Costs
• Start-up costs low
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hardware
software (eprints.org free)
installation
policies and procedures
• Medium-term costs higher
– advocacy – getting content
– support
– mediated submission
• Ongoing costs significant
– metadata creation / enhancement
– preservation
staff time
SHERPA
• Initiator: CURL
• Partners: Nottingham (lead), Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Leeds, Oxford, Sheffield, British Library, York
• Duration: three years, Summer 2002 – Summer 2005
• Funding: JISC (FAIR programme)
• Aims:
– to construct 6 institutional OAI-compliant repositories
– to investigate key issues in populating and maintaining e-print
collections
– to work with service providers to achieve acceptable
standards and the dissemination of the content
– to investigate OAIS-compliant digital preservation
– to set up an e-print data provider advisory service
– to disseminate learning outcomes and advocacy materials
Key points
• Initial installation of an OAI-compliant
e-print repository is relatively
straightforward
• Repositories need collection policies
• Getting researchers on board is the
biggest challenge
[email protected]