Summary: An ARL survey of US Institutional Repositories (IRs) begins: "Since 2002, when DSpace and other institutional repository (IR) software began to be available..." But EPrints, the first and most widely used IR software, was created in 2000...
"[Of the 87/123] responding ARL libraries 37 (43%) have an IR." But according to ROAR, there are at least 200 OAI-compliant archives in the US, 115 of them institutional or departmental IRs, 18 of them e-thesis IRs.
The ARL survey reports that "By a large majority, the most frequently used local IR software was DSpace, with... bepress [second]," but for the US ROAR currently lists 55 DSpace, 52 EPrints, and 44 Bepress archives. The corresponding worldwide figures are: 210 EPrints, 167 DSpace and 53 Bepress.
ARL states that "The average IR start-up cost has been around $182,500 and its average ongoing operation budget is about $113,500." For some less daunting cost estimates, see here and here.
ARL finds that "IR and library staff use a variety of strategies to recruit content: 83% made presentations to faculty and others, 78% identified and encouraged likely depositors, 78% had library subject specialists act as advocates, 64% offered to deposit materials for authors, and 50% offered to digitize materials and deposit them." No US university yet has a self-archiving mandate. US Provosts ought to try that: They might find it trumps all other ways of recruiting content (as Arthur Sale's analyses have been showing)!
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/23/2006 11:39:00 AM.
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.
