Transcript EXTENDING THE PARTNERSHIP

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
Supporting education and research
Structure
 What is JISC
 Why OA
 Definitions – Institutional Repositories (IRs) and
state of the art
 Activity – JISC and others
 Impact of IRs on stakeholders
Supporting education and research
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
Supporting education and research
Committees &
Consultation
e-Administration
e-Research
e-Learning
Services
e-Resources
Development
Programmes
Information
Environment
Middleware
Network
Outreach &
Embedding
Supporting education and research
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.
Supporting education and research
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_ci
rcular3_05http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=fu
nding_circular3_05>
Supporting education and research
“state of the art?”
1.
2.
That IRs are the state of the art in terms of
OA publishing. Are they state of the art?
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.
IRs are reasonably developed but far from
comprehensive and definitions are not yet
clear – still defining the landscape.
2.
Supporting education and research
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.
Supporting education and research
Some useful parameters
What makes a repository different from other
digital 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, wellsupported and well managed.
<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_digital_repositories>
Supporting education and research
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 eprints and support OA and OAI-PMH.
Supporting education and research
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.
Supporting education and research
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 subjectdisciplines 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
Supporting education and research
 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’ ?
Supporting education and research
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.
Supporting education and research
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.


Supporting education and research
Are IRs state of the art in OA?
Draw your own conclusions!
Supporting education and research
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 eprints and journals and institutions and publishers can be partners
in this.
Digital repositories, have and will continue to move beyond eprints – 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?
Supporting education and research
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.
Supporting education and research
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
Supporting education and research
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. 2004
http://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
Supporting education and research
 Thank you!
Supporting education and research