Becoming the authoritative source: taking repositories to centre stage

Abstract

Institutional repositories can be a storehouse of the research of an institution. There are many internal and external needs to find, use and report on the entirety or parts of an institution's research output. This paper examines how to harness environmental factors to make an institutional repository the central and authoritative source of the research material output of a university. How to take it from 'a place' to put research to making it 'the place' and moving it from a nice-to-have service to one with a solid, sustainable future, one that the academic community values, supports and uses rather than sees as yet another administrative burden. A key value of research material is its authoritativeness. Researchers want to be able to say 'this is my paper' or 'this is the corpus of my research'. Research organisations want to be able to say the equivalent for all their researchers. The value of this identification is not just an assertion of authorship. It is also valued because the material can be authoritatively used to feed research discovery services and e-portfolios, fulfil reporting requirements to government and funders, substantiate promotions and back-up grant applications, and assist with benchmarking academic success in any given field. There are also many other uses for a repository. The UNSWorks repository at the University of NSW will be used as a case study for this paper. The factors that can support the role of a repository as the authoritative source of research output are evaluated. The implications for interoperability with other institutional and external systems are identified, as are the resource implications and how success can be measured.