Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Tuesday, July 17, 2007

JISC launches RepositoryNet to connect existing projects

JISC has launched RepositoryNet, an umbrella initiative to unify four of its existing repository projects.  From today’s announcement:

Repositories are important for universities and colleges in helping to capture, manage and share institutional assets as a part of their information strategy. JISC is funding JISC RepositoryNet to help universities and colleges build and manage repositories so they are interoperable and research and learning outputs can be accessed and re-used…. 

In 2006 JISC committed £15 million towards Digital Repositories and Preservation activity, to support the UK educational community in realising the benefits of digital repositories, and as part of this work JISC has established JISC RepositoryNet.

JISC RepositoryNet brings together a number of activities that have been funded by JISC including:

JISC is also funding a number of universities and colleges to set up or further develop repositories for their research and learning assets. In order to realise the potential of a distributed network of digital repositories it is important that institutions set up their repositories according to common standards and for them to embed the use of repositories within their institutions and working processes. The aim of JISC RepositoryNet is to help form an interoperable network of repositories. It will do this by providing UK universities and colleges with access to trusted and expert information about repositories and by supporting some key services that form building blocks for a network of repositories. By working together, sharing practice and implementing common standards, UK universities and colleges can help to improve access to research and learning and to manage and curate their output.

All repositories within UK universities and colleges can participate in and contribute to RepositoryNet, for example by implementing common practice….