The Successful Repository: Welcome and Context

Keith WebsterUniversity Librarian & Director of Learning Services

S R RANGANATHANBooks are for useEvery reader his bookEvery book its readerSave the time of the readerA library is a growing organism

Five laws of library science, 1931

The evolution of institutional repositories

Institutional Repositories: A Workshop on Creating an Infrastructure for Faculty-Library Partnerships (ARL/SPARC/CNI – 2002)The New Frontier of Institutional Repositories (CNI, 2003)Filling Institutional Repositories (Ariadne, 2004)Beyond Storage: Rethinking the role of repositories in scholarly communication (UKOLN, 2005)

www.apsr.edu.au

The Successful Repository

29 June 2006

What triggered the IR movement?

Changes in scholarly communicationChanges in scholarly activityTechnological possibilities Emergence of standards Reduced data storage costs

Advances in digital preservation

Benefits of institutional repositories

Academics Coherent archive of their work Increase impact/dissemination A tool for collaborative research and data

storage

Universities Increase impact/prestige Recruitment/promotional tool

Society Free access to taxpayer’s (and others’) research Long-term preservation

What has been achieved?

Proliferation of repositoriesMuch early effort on technology build and content recruitmentDOAR coverage of 379 repositoriesRecognition of potential in government and other debates

But work remains to be done…

24,000 peer-reviewed journal titles2.5 million articles per annum>90 per cent publishers permit deposit15 per cent articles are self-archivedGrowing evidence that a mandate will not be resisted

Building on success

Role of repositories in e-ResearchResearch data storageBlended repositoriesCollection development policyStimulating collaborative researchMaximising research impactThe role of the Library

Going beyond the technology

How do we engage the academy?How do we make repositories sustainable?How do we demonstrate success?How do we demonstrate the need for repositories (and the value they bring)?What impact will the RQF have?

Repositories and research assessment

No absolute clarity on format of RQFRepositories as sources of research outputs – for validation and for assessmentSciences “easy” – for eprints and conference papersArts and humanities less straightforward

Research assessment

Could RQF/PBRF/RAE act as mandating mechanism? Would we want this?Links to (or replacement for) research management systemWhich versions of papers appear in repository? Pre-print Post-print Author’s mss PDF from publisher

What is assessed?

Metrics-based assessment

What measures will be used?What sort of data can we/should we gather?Standards and policy frameworksWebometrics

Hunting and gathering

Cultivation of crops

Domestication of animals

Commerce and industry

After Wolpert, 2005