DIGITAL REPOSITORIES:

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

A
LITERATURE REVIEW

PREPARED

BY

ANA LUARTE
RMIT
2006
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
______________________________________________________________________________________

ABOUT THIS PROJECT ............................................................................... 2

INTRODUCTION. ........................................................................................ 4
WHAT IS A DIGITAL REPOSITORY?........................................................................... 4
DIGITAL REPOSITORIES................................................................................ 5
INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES [IR].......................................................................... 5
DISCIPLINE-BASED REPOSITORIES ........................................................................... 5
CONSORTIA REPOSITORIES .................................................................................. 6
LEARNING OBJECTS ......................................................................................... 6
ARROW PROJECT ........................................................................................ 7
MAKING A CASE FOR A REPOSITORY ................................................................ 8
Outlining the benefits .............................................................................. 8
Research advance .................................................................................... 8
Increase visibility and raising profile of institution ........................................... 8
Possible cost reduction of scholarly published journals ...................................... 9
Benefits for Authors................................................................................. 9
COSTS INVOLVED......................................................................................10
TECHNICAL ISSUES ....................................................................................11
INTEROPERABILITY: ........................................................................................11
DOCUMENTS FORMATS AND TYPES:........................................................................12
SOFTWARE ..............................................................................................12
Dspace ................................................................................................13
GNU E-Prints.........................................................................................13
Fedora [Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture] ................14
IDENTIFIERS .............................................................................................14
ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES .............................................................................15
MANAGEMENT POLICY..............................................................................15
SUBMISSIONS ............................................................................................15
Submission: Mandatory or Not?...................................................................16
RESTRICTIONS ..........................................................................................17
COPYRIGHT..............................................................................................17
ADVOCACY AND PROMOTION ......................................................................... 18
CONCLUSIONS...........................................................................................20
APPENDIX .............................................................................................. 21
EXAMPLES OF INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES ......................................................22
University of Melbourne Repository [UMER] ...................................................22
Queensland University of Technology Repository .............................................23
Victoria University Repository....................................................................24
ARROW PROJECT ....................................................................................25
Appendix 1 & 2 ......................................................................................26
Appendix 3 ...........................................................................................27
Appendix 4 ...........................................................................................28
Appendix 5 ...........................................................................................29
Appendix 6 ...........................................................................................30
Appendix 7 ...........................................................................................31
Appendix 8 ...........................................................................................32
Appendix 9 ...........................................................................................33
Appendix 10..........................................................................................34
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... 35
Glossary ............................................................................................ 38

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ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Digital Repositories was the topic I chosen for my Information Research Project [BUSM2393] as
apart of my Bachelor of Business information & Knowledge Management degree at RMIT.

I become interested in digital repositories a while ago when I attended a presentation by the team
behind the implementation of a Digital Repository at the University of Melbourne.

I didn’t know that such repositories existed and where in most cases available for everyone that
knew about their existence.

It was interested in learning more about digital repositories and why they came into place.

Through this project I learnt that digital repositories are not a new invention and they have been
around for a while now, I also learnt that many academic libraries are taking the lead role by
implementing them.

Some of the reasons they have for setting up a repository have to do with promoting their own
community scholarly output and showcasing it to the world, the journey to achieve this at times
was not that easy, not because repositories were hard to implement, but because promoting and
convincing researchers about the benefits of participating and submitting material onto the
repository were not an easy sell, so a great deal of promoting and advocating institutional
repositories was crucial for their success.

The limitations and constrains of doing this research were related to the fact that I was not really
sure how to give a direction to my research, most of the initial research that I have done took me
to articles related to archiving and preservation, these topics were closely related to my topic, but I
was not intending to research them.

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Our lecturer suggested that I could review some articles and give my paper a start, but again the
problem of not being sure about the direction of my paper resulted in getting sidetracked on my
topic.

Once I found my way into it I began collecting enough research to start my review.
This was probably the longest part, as I could not avoid furthering reviewing other articles
mentioned in my original research.

My lecturer suggested some of the questions that I devised during this part of my project and they
proved very helpful, I began asking myself what is a repository, when they began to emerge and
the reason for that, and finally how to set up a repository.

Soon after this process some sections of my research began to emerge, my lecturer helped me
again to re-organise my paper and my table of contents.

Finally I would like to thank my lecturer Frans Koomen to help me with this research and for
giving me directions and ideas to complete this project and gain a better understanding of what
digital repositories are, and the benefits they provide for the learning community.

______________________

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INTRODUCTION.

In 2002 the MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] launched the Dspace

Institutional repository program, since then a large number of academic libraries embraced this
system and created their own digital repository.

This paper examines the issues and challenges of setting up a digital repository in an academic
library, including the technical and administrative requirements to consider prior setting up a
repository. This document also explores the benefits of implementing such system.

This paper also illustrates examples of institutional repositories in academic libraries in Australia,
with an overview of the end result, including policies, interfaces and major achievements.

What is a Digital Repository?

To better understand the term Digital Repository we must start defining what an e-print is. E-prints
are a collection of electronic documents organised in a specific way, according to their purpose.
These e-prints may or not, been referred before, and can be as varied as journals articles,
conference papers, chapters of books or any form of research output produced by an scholar
(Pinfield 2004).

In contrast to e-prints archives or digital libraries, institutional repositories capture the research
output generated by an institution; this concept is further developed in this paper.

According to Bergman [2001] e-prints are hard to find through a search engine because they may
be ‘hidden in the deep web’ and therefore they cannot be found, Bergman estimates that public
information on the deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined
world wide web. See Figure 1 & 2, institutional repositories have the ability to raise the hidden
contents of the deep to the surface web.

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Some of the common characteristics of repositories are that their content is defined and generated
by their own institutional community, including, researchers and scholars. By norm repositories
are available free online, and they are interoperable and cross-searchable

Repositories are not really a new technology in fact, in some areas or disciplines repositories have
been providing free access to users for many years. Bellow some examples and definitions of
repositories types.

DIGITAL REPOSITORIES.

Institutional repositories [IR]

The term institutional refers to the educational or research parent body that controls the
repository that usually is the university library.
IR according to Lynch [2003] is a set of services that a university provides to the members of its
community with the purpose of management and dissemination of digital materials created for the
members of the university community.
This service also implies the safekeeping of this material through long-term preservation if
appropriate including the organisation, access and distribution of the collected material.
The definition given by Crow [2002] applies better in the context of this paper; he said that “an
institutional repository is a digital archive of the intellectual product created by the faculty,
research staff, and students of an institution and accessible for end users both within and outside
of the institution with few if any barriers to access”.

Discipline-Based Repositories

This type of repository also known as Subject or Research repository are based around a specific
discipline, the first and best known is the arXiv [Link] a repository of research
papers in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science and quantitative
biology.

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ArXiv began in 1991 and was originally based at Los Alamos National and now based at Cornell
University Library; arxiv is widely used by physicists across the world (Jones, 2006).
Other examples of discipline- based repository are the EconPapers, working papers in economics
[[Link]] and CogPrints [[Link]] a repository that captures
literature on Psychology, Neuroscience and Linguistics and other areas of Computer Science.

Consortia Repositories

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] in partnership with the Hewlett-Packard

Corporation created a repository with the idea of capturing, distributing and preserve the
intellectual output of MIT. The Dspace software was later adopted by other institutions to launch
their own repositories. [Link]
Another example of Consortia repository is SHERPA LEAP [Link]
[London E-Prints Access Project] began in 2004 and provides an open access to e-prints for seven
universities in London; the LEAP Consortium is led by the University College London.

Learning Objects

A Learning object refers to a repository of electronic learning materials use for support teaching
and learning, this material is often created in small chunks of information and is re-usable,
examples of learning objects include files such a video clip, a text or a URL, a power point
presentation etc. [Wiley, 2002].
Because learning objects vary in format and metadata requirements it is difficult to capture them
into a single repository, and less likely to be considered as having a useful showcase for their
institution, despite this, the value of learning objects is their capacity to be re-used many times.
[Jones, 2006]. Learning objects emerged as a response to the need of provide high-quality reusable
instructional material for teaching, that is well organised and easy to search.

Examples of Learning Objects repositories are: The LOR (Learning Objects Repository) a project
undertaken by VCILT - University of Mauritius [See [Link]
And RMIT where objects can be use in online learning through the Blackboard and the DLS [See
[Link]

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ARROW PROJECT

ARROW project started in 2004 with ‘the objective of developing best of breed solutions for open
access institutional repositories and electronic publishing in Australian universities over three
years’ [VALA, 2006].
Because ARROW is still a development project it will identify and test appropriate software to
support best practice institutional repositories and will comprise e-prints, digital theses and
electronic publishing.

ARROW is funded by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and

Training, under the Research Information Infrastructure framework, for Australian Higher
Education.
The ARROW consortium consists of Monash University as the lead institution, Swinburne
University, the University of New South Wales and the National Library of Australia.

ARROW uses ‘Fedora platform software because is a robust, and well structure software
architecture that supports flexible object oriented data model, using persistent identifiers down to
the level of individual datastreams accommodating its compound content model’
[VALA, 2006]
ARROW primary project for 2006 is the embedding of the ARROW repositories into the
information management practice of their participating universities; this will be done through the
ARROW Discovery Service that expects to provide the following:
A) Provide an appropriate search interface that is simple search, advance search and browse
options
B) Contributing to other networks such as OAIster, Yahoo and Google
C) Ensuring appropriate local institutional and national ‘branding’ of the service
D) Provide appropriate subject- based access.

For further information on ARROW See [Link]

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MAKING A CASE FOR A REPOSITORY

Outlining the benefits

Traditionally institutional repositories and research libraries role is to capture, preserve and
disseminate their university collective intellectual output, thus becoming an indicator of the
institution’s academic quality output [Crow, 2002].
In the past research produced by academic scholars was managed within faculty departments and
kept between university intranets and hubs facilities, making impossible to access this information
freely from the outside or from popular search engines [Young, 2003], thus becoming simply ‘grey
literature’ hidden and lost from view.

Research advance

Today, with the arrival of the Web there is an increase pressure for institutional repositories to
release their output why? Because for research to advance in medical advances, in engineering and
other scientific areas it have to be available sooner than later, not only to satisfy researchers own
career ambitions, but to speed up progress in humankind [Jones, 2006].

Increase visibility and raising profile of institution

Institutional Repositories are then a metric control for the institution’s own productivity,
increasing visibility and prestige of quality scholarship research, potentially translating into benefits
for the institution such as increase funding for research and technology and possibly attract high
quality staff and students into their institution, this view is shared by Johnson [2002] Jones [2006]
and Cervone [2004]

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Possible cost reduction of scholarly published journals

Smith [2004], Jones [2006] and Crow [2002] agree that IR have the potential of reducing the costs
associated with accessing scholarly published journals through licensed publishers website and
commercial databases.
Increasing costs of journals and reduction of library budget to purchase these resources may lead
academic libraries to seek alternative access to research material by creating a new form of scholarly
publishing through e-prints repositories.

This could have the potential of transforming the existing system of publishing, this view is
supported by Pinfield, who also said that repositories do not necessarily should replace the existing
peer-reviewed journals but might rather complement them. He said journals and repositories can
exist side by side, and authors should also be encouraged to self-archive their e-prints as well as
publishing them in the peer-reviewed literature.

Lynch [2003] added that institutional repositories can enhance access to traditional scholarly
content by ‘empowering faculty to effectively use the new dissemination capabilities offered by the
network’, if researchers participate actively by submitting material in repositories they would open
up new forms of scholarly communications as referred by Pinfield earlier, thus enhancing access
of research material both short and long term.

Benefits for Authors

Some of the benefits for authors to submit their intellectual work into repositories are according
to Pickford [2006] the opportunity to increase dissemination of their research, citing the work of
Antelman and Kurtz [2004, p. 373] to illustrate that an open access material gets cited more often
than of restricted access work.
This correlation is also mentioned by Lawrence [2001], where more highly cited articles in the
Internet are more likely to be also open access and online. See Appendix 1

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For researcher digital repositories are more flexible archives in terms of use, offering greater
security and long terms access to researcher’s own material.
Another benefit for authors is the ability to access a wide range of materials in different format
through repositories compared with traditional print-based publications.

Pickford also mentions the ability of some digital repositories to allow the deposit of pre-prints
which helps authors to get feedback and commentary for their work from peers, as well as adding
some personal services to authors such as hit counts on papers, personalised publications lists and
analysis of citations [Pinfield, 2002].

COSTS INVOLVED

Here are two types of costs that should be closely examined before setting up a repository, firstly,
the cost associated with acquiring the software and the hardware, these costs according to Crow
[2002], are relatively modest compared with the costs in staff time, in terms of organising,
promoting and maintaining the repository, these costs are according to Jones [2006] Pickford
[2006] and Calan [2004] should not be underestimated.

Secondly, balancing the costs of an e-print repository compared to purchasing a large bundle of e-
journals from publishers should also be examined.

Pinfield [2004] and Jones [2006] believes that e-prints repositories have the ability to change the
current system of scholarly communication by reducing costs of purchasing prints and electronic
serials, [Cost of serials] See Appendix 2, this is unlikely to translate in the cancellations of journals
subscriptions anytime soon, but for researchers and end users it will means the chance to access
material that otherwise would be unavailable, repositories should complement existing publishing
arrangements.

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Crow [2002] also said that future costs of preserving and archiving the repository should also be
added and budgeted, especially if the institution plans to migrate and convert the media and
format of the repository content into a new version, this ‘migration’ he said could also be
outsourced to a third party to balance future archiving costs.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

Interoperability:
For a repository to provide access to users outside the university, so they are able to find and
retrieve information from it, it should be able to support interoperability in order to provide access
via search engines and other searching tools, to do exactly that persistent naming, and
standardized metadata formats and a proper metadata harvesting protocol should be in place.
[Crow, 2002].

Metadata:

Metadata describes the nature of the digital data that is stored in the repository, and also describes
the contents, structure and access of this data; this enables other services to harvest and search the
content, such is the case of the OAI [Open Archive Initiative] exists to develops and promotes
interoperability to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content’ [from Open Archives FAQ].
This Protocol for Metadata Harvesting or OAI-PMH enables the sharing of metadata between
services. OAI standards have been adopted by a large number of institutional repositories,
including OAIster [see [Link] and Goggle Scholar [see
[Link]

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Documents Formats and Types:

A very important element of the repository is the document type, in other words what sort of
document will be accepted and in which format, considering the file format in terms of suitability
and usability might translate into easy conversion or ‘migration’ of files into a new version as well
as ensuring the preservation of the original document. For instance the use of Adobe PDF as
preferred format is likely to guarantee the preservation of the document as is widely used in many
repositories, this view is supported by [Penfield, 2002] and Cervone [2004].

And according to Jones [2006], the best sort of files are those where the contents and format are
human readable [stored in plan text], and as well as Pinfield, Jones believes that storing the
converted files along with originals will ensure that risks involving migration are minimised.

For example the default file format on the E-prints org. software is to accept:
Postscript, PDF, ASCII and HTML. Pinfield also advises that because HTML format is a very
fluid standard it is difficult to validate easily, and probably not recommended to accept documents
into this format.

SOFTWARE

Some of the open source software products available are: Dspace, GNU Eprints and Fedora.
There are some commercial options like BioMed Central, but open source software are the best
option as they are free.

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Dspace
[Link]

This software as mentioned earlier was originally created as a collaborative research project
between the Hewlett Packard labs and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries over a
period of two years from 2000 to 2002.

DSpace software is easy to install and was created as a platform to build an institutional repository.
DSpace allows deposit of digital content and metadata [Dublin Core] into the repository by users
[researchers or librarians on their behalf]; this is done by following an approved workflow
indicating the policies for reviewing, and approval of the material to be lodged for submission.
Unlike E-Prints Dspace allows a wide range of digital material types.
Dspace have been adopted by many institutions including Victoria University See
[Link]

GNU E-Prints
[Link]

E- prints also was developed to provide greater access to research material, but can also be used
for many purposes such as teaching resources, museum exhibits and administrative materials] and
can also be configured to act as an archive of published research material such as journals, books,
theses, pre-prints and technical reports. E prints provides a free web interface for managing,
submitting and downloading documents, and the mayor advantage of this software is that is OAI-
compliant.

E-Prints have been adopted a number of Australian academics libraries including the University of
Melbourne, See [Link] and by Queensland University of Technology
[QUT] See [Link]

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Fedora [Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture]
[Link]

Fedora began in 1997 as part of a funded research at Cornell University and further developed in
collaboration with the University of Virginia Library Research Group. Fedora is as described in
their website ‘a powerful digital object that supports multiple views of each digital object and the
relationships among digital objects’.

Fedora is different software because the model is abstract; making no difference what kind of data
is represented by the digital object including text, images, video, sound etc, making this software is
a flexible tool for archival and institutional repositories as well as a good resource option for
education and teaching.

IDENTIFIERS

Repositories need identifiers to make persistent reference to the digital objects so they can be
searchable by users. Sale [2004] and [DiLauro, 2004] points that if objects are worth of
preservation they should have a proper identifier that is also useful over the time that the object is
preserved [long term archiving]

DSpace for instance uses the Handle System, a mechanism that helps to achieve this. Fedora
instead allows any identifier that complies with the Uniform Resource Name [URN], and does not
impose any semantics.

Some identifiers allows access additional information about themselves, which can be useful to
communicate policies regarding the identifier, for instance how long the identifier guarantees to be
resolvable, and other policies associated with the digital object itself.

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ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES

MANAGEMENT POLICY

Before a repository is established a number of decisions should be taken into consideration.

Decisions on systems architecture, content, scopes and purposes of the repository should be
defined in this policy.

According to Johnson [2002], some of the key issues to consider before setting up a repository
also are:

• Access levels, legal aspects including copyright and ownership of the material submitted.
• Standards including metadata, formats and documents types
• Sustainability and long term archiving and preservation
• Funding available to maintain the repository.

SUBMISSIONS

In order to establish how the repository will be managed it is important to have administrative
guidelines regarding the submission of material into the repository, repositories do this by using a
workflow to indicate the necessary steps to achieve it.
Workflows can easily describe who that what, when it get done and how [Thomas, 2005].

Submission is a workflow that is often entered by one person; therefore the stages of the workflow
are essentially very close together, so the process can be completed successfully very quickly.

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According to Jones [2006] any item submitted into an institutional repository is defined by its
content, in other words the files and the metadata attached to it, but they are also other important
elements that should also be considered, such as licensing agreements, so a record of what was
agreed with the depositor remains with the item perpetually, as well as the structural information
about the item.

The basic three components steps of a repository submission workflow are:

a. Capture of metadata
b. File Management
c. Licence handling

Add metadata Manage files Specify licence

Example of simple three-stage submission workflow.

See also Figure 3 to 6 in Appendix.

Submission: Mandatory or Not?

The issue of mandatory submission to the repository should also de discussed, at the moment only
QUT Queensland University of Technology have a formal requirement for authors to deposit all
research output in their repository, the rest of the Australian universities have a voluntary deposit
policies.

And according to data collected by the Australian Department of Education, Science and
Technology [DEST], “no Australian university with a voluntary policy collects significantly more
than 15% of the DEST reportable content and most much less” [Sale, 2004].

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QUT stands out 4 times higher than its nearest competitor, See Figure 7, and the data available up
to March 2005 suggest that QUT expected a success deposit ratio of nearly 60% and 80% for
2006.
For QUT the policy have been very helpful to help populate the repository according to Paula
Callan, but it was also the result of considerable amount of work put into promoting the
repository through brochures, emailing Deans and Faculties and contacting researchers.

RESTRICTIONS

Institutional repositories do not normally allow permission to remove material from the repository
once submitted. Only in exceptional circumstances these restrictions should be lifted, for instance
if there is a problem with copyright restrictions imposed in the item.

Other restrictions may refer to the access of the content of the material to a specific set of users,
for example where is an embargo by some department regarding the access of the file for political,
commercial or industrial reasons [Johnson, 2002].

Restrictions then should be specified in the repository under the management policies.

COPYRIGHT

Questions regarding the ownership of scholarly materials produced by universities are not always
easy to interpret. According to Jones [2006] this vary between countries, in Australia the legislation
establishes that an employee creates a work in the course of employment, then and subject to
contrary agreements, ownership belongs to the employing institution.

In most cases the right of the intellectual work is given away by authors as part of copyright
transfer agreements, routinely signed to publish in academic journals, this creates financial
implications for institutions to allocate sufficient funding to cover copyright permissions for
journal articles.

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This issue is also explored by Garner [2003] that reminds us that is still possible for academic staff
to submit their work in journals as well as deposit them in the institution repository. Researcher
she said signed away their copyright to publishers in exchange for the opportunity to make their
research visible and known by many, and also to gain career advances.

The University of Melbourne, for instance differ compared to other universities, because in most
cases academics own their intellectual property rights rather than being required to cede them to
the University, and contributors to the repository are required to sign a form allowing the
university non-exclusive rights to store copies in the repository, the form also requires authors to
attest that they own the intellectual property of the work.

Sometimes the author no longer owns the intellectual property of their research output, and the
research was carried out as part of a contract that may own the intellectual property, and the
author only retains the right to make the work publicly accessible on the web. See
[Link]

ADVOCACY AND PROMOTION

A digital repository requires a number of technical and administrative steps to develop before
implement it. Two very important aspects are advocacy and promoting, as there is not use of
having spent money and time planning a repository that is empty. A repository is useful when is
used by users and sufficient material is stored in them for users to search.

The participation of users by contributing with content, is primarily important, for instance at
Loughborough University in the UK ‘early adopters were identified, and individuals who were
already uploading their research to their personal web-pages and publishing in e-journals were
contacted, this resulted in 250 initial papers being loaded into the repository.

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Convincing academics of the benefits of an institutional repository is probably the main task and
possible the biggest challenge, many researchers are reluctant to submit a paper in the repository,
because this will demand to fill another form and add another task to their already limited time,
this view is supported by [Cervone, 2004].

At Loughborough University these process have been done for academics within the Library
[Pickton, 2006]
A similar experience happens at Nottingham and Edinburgh university were the easiest way to
promote the repository was by including publications that were already in the open access, some
of there were in academics own website or in departmental pages, in all of the cases authors were
contacted and most of them agreed to collaborated and sent their papers. Important is to present
the argument that a researcher is also a contributor and a reader of literature to make them to
participate into submit material.

At Queensland University promotion of the repository began immediately after the draft policy
was approved by the University Research and Development Committee.

A number of meetings an a formal launch including the distribution of a glossy brochure

explaining the repository helped to begin to show to academics that an archive existed, but extra
promotion efforts were needed.

At Melbourne University responses to the repository have been varied, from supportive to
dismissive. Some academics were satisfied with this new model of scholarly communication as well
as pleased by the speed of publication, others expressed support that their intellectual work was
being more widely and freely accessible [Garner, 2003].

Melbourne University also gathered information about the number of hits the repository received
from the date the repository was registered as compliant with OAI and indexed by ARC. See figure
8

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CONCLUSIONS

Institutional Repositories have the potential to change the problems of today’s scholarly journal
system, by transforming the scholarly communication and enhancing access to material that
otherwise is lost or hidden from view.

Repositories also have the ability to increase visibility of the institution by showcasing the
intellectual research output of their community, this not only means increased dissemination and
feedback for authors and contributors, but it also implies advance in research for humankind.

Academic libraries play an important role in developing and managing a digital repository; they are
after all, the traditional custodians of cultural memory of organisations.
By setting up a repository academic libraries are extending their commitment to provide access to
information.

Researchers and scholars are entrusting libraries to publish and preserve their intellectual work
through repositories.
Libraries then, are not longer passive mediators for users to obtain information; they can
transform their role from passive transfer agents of information to active partners of information
process.

Library and information professionals should have the vision to be leading the way in the
implementation of institutional repositories and change the structure if not the nature of scholarly
communication.

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APPENDIX

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EXAMPLES OF INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES

University of Melbourne Repository [UMER]

See: [Link]

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Queensland University of Technology Repository
See: [Link]

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Victoria University Repository

See: [Link]

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ARROW PROJECT

See: [Link]

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Appendix 1 & 2

Figure 1. Search Engines: Dragging a Net across the Web's Surface

Figure 2. Harvesting the Deep and Surface Web with a Directed Query Engine

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Appendix 3

Figure 3: The number of times and article is cited increases when the article is freely available on
the Internet. From journal Nature [vol. 411, no.6837 p.521, 2001]

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Appendix 4

Figure 4: US Association of Research Libraries [ARL]. SPARC survey analysis of serials costs
1986-2000.

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Appendix 5

Workflow 1: Unmediated Submission

User logs in

Person A
Lecturer

User uploads
file

User adds
metadata

Make live?
N

User makes
live

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Appendix 6

Workflow 2: Submission with metadata check

User logs in

Person A
Lecturer

User uploads
file

User adds User logs in

metadata

Submission Reviewer Checks

goes into pending folder for
pending folder submissions
Person B
Reviewer

Reviewer
Checks/amends
metadata

Reviewer
Requests
Sufficient additional
Metadata? N info

Reviewer
Makes live

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Appendix 7

Workflow 3: Supported Submission

User emails the

repository team
with file and info
Person A
Lecturer
User
suggests
metadata
User Rep Officer
Attaches checks email
File for submissions
Person B
Rep Officer

Rep Officer
logs in

Rep Officer
uploads file

Rep Officer
adds
metadata

Rep Officer
Makes live

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Appendix 8

Figure 8: Victoria University E-Prints Workflow for checking citation lists

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Appendix 9

Figure 9: Illustrates the research output of all Australian universities, as assessed by the
Department of Education, Science and Training [DEST]. Note that Queensland University of
Technology recorded the highest percentage of research output submitted to their repository
through mandatory submission policies.

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Appendix 10

Figure 10: Number of hits onto MER [Melbourne University Repository from the date it was
registered as OAI-compliant and indexed by ARC.

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Glossary

E-print: An electronic version of an academic own research output. This term also
refers to re and post prints of journal articles, conference and working papers
[Jones, 2006]
Interoperability: Is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information
and use the exchanged information without special effort on either system
[Young, 2003]
Grey Literature: A term used to describe unpublished scholarly material and that is hard to find
[Goggle, 2006] Also known as "Gray literature."
Peer-review: The process through which articles for journals pass for reviewing by
academics, ensuring work is checked and corrected prior publication in a
journal [Jones, 2006]
Scholarly The process of academics exchanging ideas for mutual benefit, done mainly by
communication peer-review journal system [Jones, 2006]

Semantics The meaning of a string of characters, which dictates the structure,

independent of meaning [Taylor, 2004]
SPARC Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

URL Uniform resource locator]. The name given to a web-based resource enabling
users to find its location on the World Wide Web [Jones, 2006]

Workflow A set of tasks held together in a logical network of pathways to achieve some
objective. Often the controlled flow of information is supported by a software
system [Jones, 2006]

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