Since the Repositories Roadmap1 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.2 Within UK HE institutions the RAE 2008 is in its final stages and there is now discussion of its replacement (the Research Excellence Framework). Taking a wider perspective, there has been an increase in cross-disciplinary and data-centric research, and growing awareness of the need for digital preservation. Significant targeted funding in the UK has led to many repositories being set up by both institutions and research funders. In particular JISC funding programmes have generated large numbers of repository based projects. Internationally there have been notable repository related initiatives in North America, Australia, Europe and Japan. In the light of these environmental changes it is timely to review the original Repositories Roadmap and consider the impact of these changes on the way forward.
The original Roadmap presented a vision for the role of repositories in 2010. It compared this vision to the landscape current in 2006 and indicated milestones that would need to be achieved to reach that vision. 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.
This Review is based on a consultation exercise with experts in the field by means of a Web based forum (IdeaScale), a questionnaire and a workshop. The experts’ views have been used to inform the author’s presentation of a set of priorities for action. Of necessity the contributions have been interpreted and emphases may have been changed. (Note that within the Review direct quotes from participants are indicated by text in italics.) The Review is a light-weight exercise to highlight priorities, it does not intend to give a comprehensive picture of what is now a highly complex landscape. JISC has funded several studies to inform and influence decisions on the funding of future activity. It is not the role of this Review to offer a synthesis of this large body of work, rather to recommend direction and milestones based on high level analysis of the results of the consultation process.
The Review is structured into two parts. Firstly it makes a number of recommendations targeted at the JISC Executive to inform further funding of repository related activity. 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. These milestones are for the near term to be addressed as a means to reach the vision for scholarly communication in 2013. The milestones are targeted separately at those with an interest in specific types of repository content (research papers, research data, learning materials).Achievement of these milestones will best be assisted by JISC through its community work and funding programmes.There is an additional section focusing on enabling technology. Whist the consultation exercise has informed both the recommendations and milestones, the latter are more closely based on direct input from consultation.
- the JISC Executive,
- the Repositories, Preservation and Asset Management Advisory Group (RPAG),
- the wider repository community
There is potential for a further version (or versions) of the Review to be targeted at particular audiences whether JISC project participants, institutional repository managers or the wider digital information community. Options for taking this Review forward were considered at the October 2008 JISC RPAG meeting and are discussed in the conclusion. A possible outcome will be further integration of the Roadmap into JISC’s evaluation process for funded repository activity.
Just as with the original Roadmap, the Review will focus on repositories within the context of UK higher education. The Review follows the pattern of the original Roadmap by considering milestones for different content types separately: research outputs3 (including text, images and multimedia), learning materials, and research data. In the Review geodata is subsumed under research data rather than being given separate treatment.
The original Roadmap was concerned with objects created, owned and shared by members of the HE community not those made available on a commercial basis. Also institutional administrative records were deemed out of scope. Whilst this overall focus remains, given the increase in repository activity it is now appropriate for a repository roadmap to take a wider view and consider the potential for interaction between repositories and other institutional systems that might be considered ‘administrative’, particularly research information systems, content management systems and author identity systems. Similarly as institutional and national repositories become established then their role in relation to commercial repositories becomes interesting, and this Review suggests development of a stronger relationship between repositories and journal publishers, AI service publishers, and global service providers. This broadening in scope has been done only to a limited extent in the Review due to constraints on time and effort.
- Rachel Heery and Andy Powell. Digital repositories roadmap: looking forward. 2006 [.doc] []
- Examples of network level services in this context are Amazon S3, Google Docs, authentication services, identifier services. []
- Within the Roadmap and Roadmap Review the phrase ‘research outputs’ refers to the textual material that makes up a high percentage of the content of existing repositories i.e. research papers, journal articles and dissertations. In future research outputs might also include textual work in progress, and more complex items such as multimedia pieces and images. []