Creating Sustainable Solutions with Hosted Institutional Repositories: How Future-Proof Is Your Infrastructure?
Location
Cook 209A / Zoom Room A
Presentation Type
Short Concurrent Session
Start Date
26-4-2024 3:00 PM
Description
This presentation will discuss the core purpose of institutional repositories and why universities are investing in them as well as the benefits of fully hosted infrastructure that supports this core purpose. To help the community evaluate the current readiness of existing institutional repositories so they can evolve with funding mandates, we're going to provide a checklist to assess your current state of play.
Institutional repositories help Universities promote their researchers' work, provide tangible mechanisms and infrastructure for growing funder policy compliance requirements, and strengthen the Library's role in supporting the communication of research. This is in addition to fostering a culture of proficient research management and championing core open research principles and best practices amongst faculty and researchers.
When we begin to think about what essential functionalities or capabilities an institutional repository needs to have to be able to support the core motivating factors for having one in the first place; a simple starting point is that it needs to be technologically sound and, wherever possible, be available at the point of need. If the repository infrastructure is down at the point a researcher needs to submit a dataset, reserve a DOI, or make a journal article openly available, this may not only deter that single deposit or action but put them off coming back to the service again.
The institutional repository also needs to be meaningful to all faculties and research areas. Research data management and the sharing of all outputs associated with the research process in a FAIR way has already become best practice and the 'norm' in certain subject areas, e.g. some STEM disciplines - however, there is still some way to go for other disciplines that do not traditionally see themselves as creating or having research 'data' that they need to share. To further this journey towards all research outputs being as 'open as possible', an institutional repository needs to be able to support a large variety of outputs in different file formats, have flexible metadata, and provide meaningful metrics if Universities are going to be able to support OSTP and NIH mandates in the coming years.
Across the pond, a recent paper explored software updates as a core part of running repositories and stated: "42% of repositories upgraded their repository platforms in 2022, and 74% of repositories stated that they were planning to upgrade in 2023. 21% of repositories that upgraded in 2022 plan to do it again in 2023. In total, about 60% of respondents have either updated their repository in 2022 or are planning to update to a more recent version in 2023. This presentation will propose a checklist for repository administrators and engineers to support repository upgrade and planning activities, and look at which existing hosted solutions might pose a more sustainable way to evolve institutional repositories in a rapidly changing landscape.
Presentation Slides
Creating Sustainable Solutions with Hosted Institutional Repositories: How Future-Proof Is Your Infrastructure?
Cook 209A / Zoom Room A
This presentation will discuss the core purpose of institutional repositories and why universities are investing in them as well as the benefits of fully hosted infrastructure that supports this core purpose. To help the community evaluate the current readiness of existing institutional repositories so they can evolve with funding mandates, we're going to provide a checklist to assess your current state of play.
Institutional repositories help Universities promote their researchers' work, provide tangible mechanisms and infrastructure for growing funder policy compliance requirements, and strengthen the Library's role in supporting the communication of research. This is in addition to fostering a culture of proficient research management and championing core open research principles and best practices amongst faculty and researchers.
When we begin to think about what essential functionalities or capabilities an institutional repository needs to have to be able to support the core motivating factors for having one in the first place; a simple starting point is that it needs to be technologically sound and, wherever possible, be available at the point of need. If the repository infrastructure is down at the point a researcher needs to submit a dataset, reserve a DOI, or make a journal article openly available, this may not only deter that single deposit or action but put them off coming back to the service again.
The institutional repository also needs to be meaningful to all faculties and research areas. Research data management and the sharing of all outputs associated with the research process in a FAIR way has already become best practice and the 'norm' in certain subject areas, e.g. some STEM disciplines - however, there is still some way to go for other disciplines that do not traditionally see themselves as creating or having research 'data' that they need to share. To further this journey towards all research outputs being as 'open as possible', an institutional repository needs to be able to support a large variety of outputs in different file formats, have flexible metadata, and provide meaningful metrics if Universities are going to be able to support OSTP and NIH mandates in the coming years.
Across the pond, a recent paper explored software updates as a core part of running repositories and stated: "42% of repositories upgraded their repository platforms in 2022, and 74% of repositories stated that they were planning to upgrade in 2023. 21% of repositories that upgraded in 2022 plan to do it again in 2023. In total, about 60% of respondents have either updated their repository in 2022 or are planning to update to a more recent version in 2023. This presentation will propose a checklist for repository administrators and engineers to support repository upgrade and planning activities, and look at which existing hosted solutions might pose a more sustainable way to evolve institutional repositories in a rapidly changing landscape.