Digital Repositories and Author Self-archiving

Online digital archives are another way for scholars to enjoy rapid, free worldwide dissemination of their works. Often created by or with the cooperation of library staff and housed at the library, these archives (also called repositories) are a good example of the way that libraries have helped to bring scholarly communication to a wider audience. Archives accomplish the goal of integrating and institutionalizing open communication in libraries and among partners across campus.

Archives can include peer-reviewed materials as well as preprints, data sets, research reports and other materials not subjected to peer review before deposit. In 2002 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched DSpace, an institutional repository (IR) intended to capture MIT's entire intellectual output in a stable electronic archive. At the same time, it released the DSpace IR repository as open-source software, freely available to all interested users. Since then, many colleges and universities have developed their own repositories based on DSpace or other software. The ultimate goal is to create a seamless worldwide network, where multiple databases can be searched as if they were a single entity, and specialized collections built by drawing on content spread across many institutions.

The creation of Institutional repositories and the attendant necessary discussion of policies and practices world-wide has already effected significant change. In early 2008, for example, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously to give the university permission to post their scholarly articles in an institutional repository. The policy requires faculty to retain the right to archive their peer-reviewed manuscripts when signing publisher agreements (though faculty can get a waiver by asking for it in writing). About two-thirds of publishers already grant such permission. The one-third that don't currently allow self-archiving must conform to the mandate or lose the work of Harvard authors. Harvard's is the first university mandate in the United States and the first anywhere to be initiated by faculty rather than administrators. (Source: Library Journal) A multiple-institution coalition, or a community of colleges and universities, could also employ such a repository.

Disciplinary repositories, such as arXiv (physics, mathematics, nonlinear sciences, computer science, quantitative biology) perform the same sorts of services as institutional repositories, but for scholars within particular disciplines or groups of disciplines. The Open Access Directory (OAD) is a continually-updated resource of disciplinary repositories. The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provides a list of open digital repositories, both disciplinary and institutional, organized by continent.

Electronic submission, storage, and dissemination of student theses and dissertations are growing more common in universities and colleges. For many libraries, ETDs (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) are the first targets for an institutional repository program, and represent an opportunity to engage graduate students and their faculty advisors in broader conversation about open access, intellectual property management, long-term management of digital content, and other scholarly communication issues. (Source: C&RL News.)

Recent years have seen the development of several powerful sophisticated software systems for the implementation and management of repositories. A number of these systems are available free through open source licenses. OAD also has a list of Free and Open-Source Repository Software. The recent development of new standards and protocols, such as the Open Archives Initiative, will provide interoperability, allowing scholars to search across repositories and create “virtual archives” by harvesting metadata (document descriptions) from a variety of places.

Librarians seeking to educate faculty on archives or ETDs as an option may wish to demonstrate the usability of a relevant repository in real time.