Table of Contents
In 2006 JISC funded a roadmap for digital repositories. This roadmap was produced by Rachel Heery of UKOLN and Andy Powell of the Eduserv Foundation. The roadmap presented a vision for the role of digital repositories in 2010.
As 2010 is approaching and there have been significant developments in policy, practice and technology relevant to digital repositories JISC funded Rachel Heery to produce a review of the original roadmap and to extend the vision until 2013. The review is based on consultation with experts using a Web forum (IdeaScale), a questionnaire based survey, and a workshop.
The review is structured into two parts. Firstly it makes a number of recommendations targeted at the JISC Executive. The review then goes on to identify a number of milestones of relevance to the wider community that might act as a measure of progress towards the wider vision of enhanced scholarly communication. Achievement of these milestones would be assisted by JISC through its community work and funding programmes. The review addresses repositories for research outputs, research data and learning materials in separate sections.
The original roadmap has been replaced by this review and this document will be used to inform JISC planning for future funding of repository related activity.
Many thanks to all those who contributed to the review by completing the email questionnaire, participating in the IdeaScale Web forum, or attending the workshop. The author takes responsibility for interpreting input and for any change of emphasis that comes with collating the viewpoints of the various contributors.
The Repositories Roadmap was published in 2006 and presented a vision for the role of repositories in 2010. Given the many changes in practice, policy and technology since 2006 it is timely to review the Roadmap. This Review seeks to extend the horizon to 2013, to clarify the relationship of repositories to the broader environment and to steer the future work of JISC and others interested in furthering repository implementation and enhanced scholarly communication. The review is based on consult [...]
Aim Since the Repositories Roadmap ((Rachel Heery and Andy Powell. Digital repositories roadmap: looking forward. 2006 [.doc])) was published in 2006 a lot has changed – on the Web, within the higher education (HE) research and teaching environment, and within the repository landscape itself. On the Web there has been a growth in social networking, user generated data and network level services. ((Examples of network level services in this context are Amazon S3, Google Docs, authentic [...]
Charting progress Over the last two years the level of repository activity has increased within the UK and beyond. Progress against the original Roadmap has been made on several fronts. A majority of UK HE institutions have implemented repositories. Institutional repositories (IRs) have been populated with content of various types, albeit much of the attention and discussion has focused on open access to peer-reviewed journal articles. At the national level six out of the seven RCUK funders a [...]
It is notoriously difficult to involve end-users in development projects. Nevertheless their involvement is vital in discussions of scholarly communication. Although JISC projects already have input from experts in digital information management, such experience is very different from that of many researchers and teachers. IR managers are well placed to remedy this situation by developing contacts with research and teaching staff to enable their involvement. If we could learn more about what r [...]
Progress has been made since the original Roadmap. However the plethora of repository related activity means that higher level objectives can easily get lost in detail. This is an issue at the policy level but perhaps more so for the individual institutional repository manager trying to reconcile the needs of their particular institution with wider activity. The repositories landscape is complex. A network of repositories is emerging made up of various repository types and multiple stakeholde [...]
Discussion of terminology broadened to consider the multiple roles of a repository and how these fit with the vision of enhanced scholarly communication. Following two years of intense repository activity, the role of repositories seems diffuse, and the lack of clarity about objectives is having a real impact on those working in this area. Themes that emerged included institutional repositories need to meet the local requirements of their users (as content creators) as well as the wider o [...]
Note that aspects of the debate relating to adherence to Web architecture are covered in section 4 of this Review. Some frustration has been expressed within the JISC programmes and in the Review consultation that Web 2.0 applications might be better exploited to support objectives associated with repositories. Web 2.0 is being used here as a catch-all for recent developments on the Web, not just wikis and blogs but also social networking, user generated content, cloud computing etc. This [...]
Note that details of ‘where we are now’ are not included for the technical infrastructure section as this information was not gathered explicitly as part of the consultation. As it is, much background to the current situation is implicit in the following sections and section 3.5 on exploiting the Web. Technical infrastructure: where we want to be in 2013 As previously discussed a renewed vision for scholarly communication in 2013 is yet to be developed. More work needs to be done to de [...]
Milestones for different repository content types were drawn up with the help of input from the questionnaire survey and workshop. Twelve people attended the workshop, excluding JISC staff, and eleven (different) people responded to the questionnaire from a total of nineteen contacted (58%). Participants were asked to respond to the following questions from the viewpoint of the content type with which they were most familiar: Where do we want to be in 2013? What are the main busine [...]
Research outputs: where do we want to be in 2013? Repositories will be established as a collection and delivery channel for content. In five years time we will have a respectable collection of content at each institution. Open access will be available to the full text of a variety of research outputs including peer reviewed research papers, work in progress, grey literature, and theses. Whilst some of the content of digital library collections will be closed due to licence agreements, much [...]
Research Data: where do we want to be in 2013? Providing access, sharing and re-use of data will enable ‘new’ research. Physical and earth sciences will be working like the biology/bioinformatics communities, drawing on large datasets managed at community level. Data will be made accessible to research groups for re-use by means of Web based ‘research environments’. A national strategy needs to be in place to ensure discovery, access, re-use and preservation of data. There are di [...]
Learning materials: where do we want to be in 2013? Learning repositories should support better management and sharing of teaching and learning materials by individual lecturers. Feedback from consultation suggests learning material comprises two different sorts of content. Firstly a wealth of ‘day-to-day’ content produced by lecturers and uploaded to local institutional VLEs. Secondly quality assured material that is uploaded to repositories with more highly controlled policies. Overa [...]
Whilst progress has been made since the original Roadmap, not surprisingly feedback from the consultation concentrates on what still needs to be done. Various changes in emphasis are indicated: the focus should be on higher level objectives rather than on repositories; the technology approach should be more aligned with Web 2.0; repositories are part of a wider network of digital services, and their role within that network needs to be clarified. The Review highlights a number of challenges fa [...]