Institutional repositories are important to faculty who want their publications to reach the widest possible audience. By placing copies of their published works into an official archive at their institution, open to access by anyone in the world and indexed in full by Google and other search engines, faculty can achieve wider distribution of their works (and higher citations rates).
Institutional repositories are rapidly gaining a foothold in major universities-MIT is leading the way with DSpace; the University of California with eScholarship. Over 300 librarians and IT specialists attended a recent conference on repository development, at which it was clear that the access statistics for archived faculty work were stunning. AISR is currently working to provide such a repository for Jefferson, and we expect it to be available by early 2005.
What About That Pesky Copyright?
Most professional journals now allow some form of pre- or post-print self-archiving. Elsevier and others specifically allow authors to place copies of their work into an institutional repository. You can find out what the current policy is for most publishers-librarians track them at a central website. Proposed rules at NIH would further press publishers to provide such permission (see the Sept/Oct Forum article about the proposal to archive results of NIH-funded research).
Of course, Library staff will be available to help determine what can legally be placed in our repository.
Is It Good For Anything Else?
Repository software can also provide editorial and peer review functions, so that journal or conference proceedings editorial work-and even dissertation review-can take place entirely online. Repository pages can be tailored with unique graphics so you can publish a journal or conference proceedings with an independent look and feel. Repository software can handle access restrictions and manage identities, so that you can store departmental papers for access only by your department, and yet have full searchability.
Wow! How Can I Participate?
AISR expects to acquire software for its repository in early 2005. We'll be working initially on some small pilot projects, and approaching individual faculty and departments about potential partnerships. If you would like to explore some ideas for projects, please contact Edward Tawyea at 215-503-8848 or Edward.Tawyea@jefferson.edu.
And, of course, read future issues of the Forum for further developments.
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