Delivering the Next-Generation Research Repository: The Challenges of Institutional Repositories and the Need for a New Approach

Introduction

Institutional repositories that collect a university’s research assets in one place and make them publicly available, serve an important role. These repositories, which are usually managed by the library, help disseminate the work of faculty members to a broader academic community, making it easier for other researchers to find, use, and build on the knowledge generated by a university. They also help universities comply with rules requiring research funded with public tax money, to be made publicly available. But in many ways, the institutional repositories that exist today are not meeting the needs of libraries or the research community effectively. For instance, they often lack a clear and cohesive structure, which makes research assets hard to find. They are also largely cumbersome to maintain, with inefficient workflows that make it difficult to deposit new research outputs, link publications with their underlying data sets, and add comprehensive metadata to make these assets discoverable.

As a result, the research assets of universities are not being showcased as well as they could be and staff is spending too much time on these labor-intensive tasks.

In this white paper, we will make the case for how a next-generation research repository can solve these challenges. With input from research universities around the world, we will outline a vision for a next-generation research repository that meets the needs of both researchers and institutions far more effectively (“Implementing FAIR Data Principles”, n.d.).