Institutional repositories (IRs) are proliferating as they become an indispensable component for information and knowledge sharing in the scholarly world. As their numbers increase worldwide, a new phase of IR development is emerging. Moving beyond their initial functions, IRs no longer serve solely as a place to store, organize, and access content. With rapidly changing technologies, users now desire and expect transportable content that can be utilized within various digital environments and reused in multiple formats, and they need forums for the rapid exchange of ideas with both on-campus and external communities. In response, universities and the libraries hosting IRs are looking for ways to weave their repositories into the "information fabric" of their campuses' academic and business processes and catalyze changes in scholarly communications more broadly.
This article will examine emerging IR developments and explore how IRs can help create a new infrastructure to support scholarly communications and digital research. The experiences of the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) Library and Information Center while building its IR, SMARTech, and designing related services will be reviewed as an exemplar university....
Under this program, the Digital Initiatives Work Group began to provide technical support services to produce traditional scholarly communications in digital form. Initially, the Group worked to:...Provide technology/production support services to create open access e-journals and other e-publications, providing preservation and accessibility via SMARTech....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/16/2006 05:28:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
