In the UK, the repository network is well established, and supports access to research papers and other digital assets created within universities. Increasingly, repositories are part of a research information management solution helping to track and report on research.
Over the past few years, Jisc has worked with a number of partners, including the University of Nottingham (Sherpa Services), EDINA, Mimas and the Open University (Knowledge Media Institute) to develop a range of services that benefit UK research by making institutional repositories more efficient and effective. Estimates put the annual net benefit, simply in terms of time saved by universities, at around £1.4m. Following a comprehensive review of the business case for these services, Jisc now intends to build on the RepositoryNet+ project led by EDINA, to put key services onto a more sustainable footing, including financial, organisational and technical aspects of their operation.
Sherpa Services run Sherpa-RoMEO and Sherpa-Juliet, the former providing trusted information about the rights of authors to deposit their papers into repositories, the latter providing a list of research funders’ open access policies, to which grant holders should comply. Together, these underpin the new Sherpa-FACT service, whose initial development has been supported by the Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust. Jisc proposes to work with these services over the next few months to identify a medium term strategy for each, and to support them thereafter, working in partnership where appropriate with others such as the Councils and Wellcome.
EDINA have developed the Repository Junction Broker, which promises to support mass deposit of papers from publishers and subject repositories into institutional repositories. Should the proposed HEFCE policy with respect to OA and the REF be confirmed, this will be a key service enabling institutional repositories to play their role in submissions to the next REF. Again, the proposed plan is to work with EDINA to develop a medium term strategy for RJB, and support it thereafter, while exploring a range of sustainability options with other stakeholders.
Mimas provide IRUS-UK, which enables institutional and other repositories to share usage data in a way that complies with international standards, so that usage reports can be reliably compared. Over 30 UK repositories are already part of the IRUS-UK network, with more joining all the time. Jisc intends to continue its support for IRUS-UK.
Other services have grown up alongside these, to varying levels of maturity. For example, EDINA have developed an organisational and repository identifier service, and explored a disaster recovery service for repositories. The Open University Knowledge Media Institute has developed CORE, a sophisticated aggregation and discovery service for repositories worldwide. Jisc looks forward to working with these services too, to ensure that UK repositories, their host organisations, and the people who use them benefit from greater efficiencies and a more responsive infrastructure.
As we move forward with this work, we will post updates here and elsewhere. If you have any questions or comments on this work, please contact Neil Jacobs (n.jacobs@jisc.ac.uk) or Balviar Notay (b.notay@jisc.ac.uk).