Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, May 17, 2007

JISC support for institutional repositories

Tracey Caldwell, Reaping the Rewards, JISC Inform, Spring 2007.  Excerpt:

JISC is supporting institutions as they establish and develop digital repositories to host a wide range of online content....

The UK is raising its research profile as universities increasingly showcase their research content in digital repositories.

A third of universities now have repositories at some stage of development. They are looking to reap the return on their investment in a number of ways, including improving research efficiency, raising institutional profile and easier recruitment of top class academics.

JISC has stepped in to maintain the momentum of repository development, supporting a number of projects aimed at underpinning repository development in large institutions and kickstarting development in small or specialist institutions.

Within the JISC Repositories and Preservation programme there are a number of strands of funding, including the Start-up and enhancement strand, which is providing £4 million of development funding, matched by investment from institutions themselves. Alongside this JISC has set up the Repositories Support project, a two and a half year project funded to the tune of over £1.3 million from HEFCE and HEFCW to support repository development in England and Wales.... 

[Amber Thomas, programme manager for Start-up and Enhancement] adds, ‘The benefits to universities include a greater visibility to business and improved knowledge transfer, allowing universities to justify their place in society by making their output more visible. Also they gain increased standing in the research community through greater visibility for their research and their researchers.’ ...

Bill Hubbard, [Repositories Support Project ] project manager, says: ‘For existing institutions with repositories we are trying to give them what they need to help them to grow the repository: standards for interoperability, providing advocacy material, briefing papers targeted for different audiences from senior managers to academics.’ ...