Digital repositories ten years on: what do scientific researchers think of them and how do they use them?

Digital repositories have been with us for more than a decade, and despite the considerable media and conference attention they engender, we know very little about their use by academics.

This paper sets out to address this by reporting on how well they are used, what they are used for, what researchers’ think of them, and where they thought they were going. Nearly 1,700 scientific researchers, mostly physical scientists, responded to an international survey of digital repositories, making it the largest survey of its kind.

High deposit rates were found and mandates appear to be working, especially with younger researchers. Repositories have made significant inroads in terms of impact and use despite, in the case of institutional repositories, the very limited resources deployed. S

ubject repositories, like arXiv and PubMed Central, have certainly come of age but institutional repositories probably have not come of age yet although there are drivers in place which, in theory anyway, are moving them towards early adulthood.

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20120620-Digital_repositories_ten_years_on.pdf

Establishment of Institutional Mechanism for Building National Repository…

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Establishment of Institutional Mechanism for Building National Repository in Health Sciences :

“National consolidation of published and unpublished literature in the field of biomedical sciences can playa major role in scholarly communication to help the end users in providing research published in the country.Institutional repositories are a good approach for a cost-effective publishing with a cooperation and participationof each institution for capturing, preserving, managing, and nurturing the discussion. In turn, metadata can be harvested centrally to access the digital information of common interest whereas individual libraries shouldable to preserve digital assets. Institutionalisation mode has been recommended for building national digitalrepository system for the country. The public funding should be provided to apex body so as to formulatethe requisite policies for the spread of open access movement in the country and also formulate a long termsustainable model for building national level system in the country.”

URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/2386

Does Tenure Matter Factors Influencing Faculty Contributions to…

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Does Tenure Matter? Factors Influencing Faculty Contributions to Institutional Repositories :

INTRODUCTION : Institutional repositories (IRs) provide colleges and universities a way to ensure stability of access to and dissemination of digital scholarly communications. Yet, many institutions report that faculty willingness to contribute to IRs is often limited. This study investigates faculty attitudes about IR contributions by tenure status and category of material.

IMETHODS: Two focus group interviews were conducted in the spring of 2009 among English department faculty at a large Midwestern university. One group consisted of tenured faculty and the other of tenure-track and adjunct faculty.

IRESULTS: Both groups recognize the benefit of open access to research materials but expressed concern about their intellectual property rights. Untenured faculty spoke more about nonprint research. Both groups also shared concerns about contributing instructional materials, primarily in regard to plagiarism and outdated materials. In regard to faculty service, the tenured group discussed many items they would contribute, while the untenured faculty mentioned very little.

IDISCUSSION: Some minor differences emerged related to experience and tenure status in regard to contributing research and instructional artifacts, but the major variation was the strong support tenured participants gave for contributing service items, compared to the untenured faculty, who did not view this category positively. Tenured faculty viewed the IR as a way to document their own service activities, investigate those of colleagues, and had fewer concerns about plagiarism or other negative effects in the service category.

CONCLUSION: Promoting faculty contribution of service-related items to an IR may be a way to encourage larger numbers to participate.”

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss1/8/

Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories

Librarians need to be familiar with the evolving aspects of scholarly communication and the changing scholarly record. One component of that is the role of repositories. It’s crucial for anyone working in a research library to understand the repository landscape, both to advise researchers on where to look for information and how to disseminate their own research articles.

Librarians should appreciate the nature of the leading disciplinary repositories and have a sense of their motivations, their scope, and how they operate. Before getting involved with a disciplinary repository, they should be familiar with the risks and opportunities in depending on the repository and, most importantly, they need to know if the repository has a sustainable model.

For a library considering starting a disciplinary repository or taking on the operation of an existing one, these considerations are essential.

URL : http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2012/2012-03.pdf

Usage and Impact of Controlled Vocabularies in a…

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Usage and Impact of Controlled Vocabularies in a Subject Repository for Indexing and Retrieval :

“Since 2009, the German National Library for Economics (ZBW) supports both indexing and retrieval of Open Access scientific publications like working papers, postprint articles and conference papers by means of a terminology web service. This web service is based on concepts organized as a ‘Standard Thesaurus for Economics’ (STW), which is modelled and regularly published as Linked Open Data. Moreover, it is integrated into the institution’s subject repository for automatically suggesting appropriate key words while indexing and retrieving documents, and for automatically expanding search queries on demand to gain better search results. While this approach looks promising to augment ‘off the shelf’ repository software systems in a lightweight manner with a disciplinary profile, there is still significant uncertainty about the effective usage and impact of controlled terms in the realm of these systems. To cope with this, we analyze the repository’s logfiles to get evidence of search behaviour which is potentially influenced by auto suggestion and expansion of scientific terms derived from a discipline’s literature.”

URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/issues/2011-3_4/index.html?000555

Fostering New Roles for Librarians Skills Set for…

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Fostering New Roles for Librarians: Skills Set for Repository Managers — Results of a Survey in Italy :

“The open access movement in scholarly communication has grown considerably over the last ten years and it has driven an increase in the number of institutional repositories (IRs). New professional roles and skills had to be developed to secure effective IR management.

Collection developmente expertise and metadata curation are regarded as strategic roles for repositories and therefore it is only logical for the library and information community to take on the responsibility for managing these digital archives. However, it has become clear that traditional librarian skills do not suffice anymore to run successful repositories. A richer set of skills is needed, including management and communication skills, technical skills, and expertise with regard to access rights and preservation of digital content.

Referring to the work carried out by the SHERPA Project in the UK with regard to the skills set for repository staff, the authors performed a survey among repository managers in Italy to assess the educational and professional background of the repository managers and the skills set required to implement successful institutional repositories.

The survey findings show that the professional profile of the repository manager is a multiform and complex one. It requires cross-functional and highly specialised competencies. Italian repository managers are of the opinion that the skills required to promote the repository within the institution and those required to deal with copyright issues as the most essential skills repository managers should acquire and be trained for. Collection development and metadata expertise, familiarity with project management and expertise in repository workflow design are also highly rated. Technical skills are needed to deal with interoperability standards and protocols.

In Italy academic curricula do not meet the repository managers’ educational needs. Academic programmes should be developed to include communication, project management and team work skills and pay more attention to copyright issues. Until that time repository managers will have to spend a considerable part of their working lives on professional training and self-directed learning.”

URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/issues/2011-3_4/index.html?000553

Setting up an open access digital repository A…

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Setting up an open access digital repository: A case study :

“Setting up of institutional repositories has been gathering momentum in India and many academic and R&D establishments have made it mandatory to set up institutional repositories. This paper briefly details the work that has goneinto setting up and configuring the digital repository of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MOES). The repository has been setup using the free and open source software, GNU Eprints.org (http://eprints.org). Such a repository will not only help in thewider dissemination of the publications that emerge from the projects and programmes supported by the MOES, but it willalso serve as an information management system for the ministry.”

URL : http://op.niscair.res.in/index.php/ALIS/article/view/77