An Institutional Repository is an online locus for collecting, preserving, and disseminating -- in digital form -- the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution.
For a university, this would include materials such as research journal articles, before (preprints) and after (postprints) undergoing peer review, and digital versions of theses and dissertations, but it might also include other digital assets generated by normal academic life, such as administrative documents, course notes, or learning objects.
The four main objectives for having an institutional repository are:
- to create global visibility for an institution's scholarly research;
- to collect content in a single location;
- to provide open access to institutional research output by self-archiving it;
- to store and preserve other institutional digital assets, including unpublished or otherwise easily lost ("grey") literature (e.g., theses or technical reports).
The origin of the notion of an "institutional repository" [IR] are twofold:
- IRs are partly linked to the notion of digital interoperability, which is in turn linked to the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and its Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The OAI in turn had its roots in the notion of a "Universal Preprint Service,"[1] since superseded by the open access movement.
- IRs are partly linked to the notion of a digital library -- i.e., collecting, housing, classifying, cataloguing, curating, preserving, and providing access to digital content, analogous with the library's conventional function of collecting, housing classifying, curating, preserving and providing access to analog content.
There is a mashup indicating the worldwide locations of open access digital repositories. This project is called Repository 66 and is based on data provided by ROAR and the OpenDOAR service developed by the SHERPA. Data from this service indicates that as of 2007[update], the most popular IR software platforms are Eprints, DSpace, and Bepress.
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Value of Institutional Repository for Student Learning
Student capstone papers posted to an Institutional Repository lead to greater transparency. In most classes when a student does a research paper, the process is very private. The student submits it to the professor and receives a grade. It is a private behind closed door affair. In the best of all possible worlds, the student gets detailed feedback from the professor. In the worst case scenario, the teacher skims the paper and returns it with a grade and no comment. In these cases, no one knows if the professor did or did not read the paper. There is an incentive to give a high grade. There is no incentive for the student to question a high grade. Most professors are ethical professionals and work hard at their job. Unfortunately, the incentives and processes depend on very high ethics for the best outcome. An institutional repository changes the incentives. This is a good thing.
When Capstone papers (Master's Theses, Applied Research Projects, Honor's Theses) are placed in an institutional repository, the whole world has access to them. At worst, the process changes incentives because neither the student nor the professor wants to be embarrassed by the product. At best, the paper is an opportunity to provide useful knowledge to the world and show off a students strengths (it can be used as evidence in a job interview). There is an incentive for the best to be better and the worst to rise to a higher standard. The world can see the capabilities of the students of the institution.
The academic community is asking; how can one judge what a student learns? How valuable are the knowledge and skills a student learns? These are questions provosts around the country are struggling with. For papers that are posted to an institutional repository, downloads can be a measure of the value. The papers themselves could be examined to answer the question – what did the student learn?
In their book, "Silent Success: Master's Education in the United States" C. Conrad, J. Haworth and S. Miller (1993), [2] discuss the characteristics of high quality Master's programs. A few of these characteristics include - immersion, doing centered learning, individualization, and tangible product. When master's capstone papers are posted to an institutional repository, all of these qualities are reinforced.
For an example of a student capstone papers on an institutional repository see Texas State University - San Marcos, Master of Public Administration, Applied Research Projects http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/.
See also
References
External links
- Digital Commons (full service commercial IR platform from the Berkeley Electronic Press)
- Beyond Open Access: Open Discourse, the next great equalizer, Retrovirology 2006, 3:55
- DSpace (open source IR software)
- Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research DRIVER website. EU infrastructure project.
- Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
- EPrints (open source IR software)
- Fedora
- Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite, a bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
- Making Institutional Repositories a Collaborative Learning Environment
- NARCIS: Gateway to Dutch Scientific Information
- OAKList Database
- Open Access Archivangelism by Stevan Harnad
- Openarchives.eu - The European Guide to OAI-PMH Institutional Repositories in the World
- Open Repositories Conference website (events and conference proceedings)
- Ranking Web of World Repositories
- Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR).
- Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP)
- Repository 66
- Selected Works on Institutional Repositories (non commercial site)
- SHERPA
- Respository Support Project - JISC funded project to help IRs in the UK
- What is Open Access?
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