The Successful Repository: Welcome and Context Keith Webster University Librarian & Director of Learning Services

S R RANGANATHAN Books are for use Every reader his book Every book its reader Save the time of the reader A 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)

The Successful Repository 29 June 2006

What triggered the IR movement? Changes in scholarly communication Changes in scholarly activity Technological 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 repositories Much early effort on technology build and content recruitment DOAR coverage of 379 repositories Recognition of potential in government and other debates

But work remains to be done… 24,000 peer-reviewed journal titles 2.5 million articles per annum >90 per cent publishers permit deposit 15 per cent articles are self-archived Growing evidence that a mandate will not be resisted

Building on success Role of repositories in e-Research Research data storage Blended repositories Collection development policy Stimulating collaborative research Maximising research impact The 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 RQF Repositories as sources of research outputs – for validation and for assessment Sciences “easy” – for eprints and conference papers Arts 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 system Which 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 frameworks Webometrics

Hunting and gathering Cultivation of crops Domestication of animals Commerce and industry After Wolpert, 2005