Institutional Repositories

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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

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Structure

• What is JISC
• Why OA
• Definitions Institutional Repositories (IRs)
  and state of the art
• Activity JISC and others
• Impact of IRs on stakeholders

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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

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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 individuals 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.

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Relevant JISC activities

• Journal Negotiation NESLi 2
• Business Models Study - Rightscom
• Open Access Initiative
• FAIR Programme
• New Digital Repositories Programme
  -lthttp//www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?namefunding_cir
  cular3_05http//www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?namefund
  ing_circular3_05gt

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state of the art?

• 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
• 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.

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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.

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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,
  well-supported and well managed.
• lthttp//www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?nameprogramme_di
  gital_repositoriesgt

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 ?

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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.

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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.

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Are IRs state of the art in OA?

• Draw your own conclusions!

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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?

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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.

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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
  participationa 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

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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?nam
  e 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?namefunding_circu
  lar3_05

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• Thank you!