Introduction
What is a Digital Repository?
A digital repository is a an online storage mechanism that stores and makes available publications and other outputs. Research articles stored in digital repositories are typically eprints - digital versions of research documents (usually journal articles but also other formats such as conference papers, book chapters and theses etc). Eprints includes includes both pre-prints (before an article has been peer reviewed) and post-prints (after peer review). A key goal of digital repostitories is to promote increased accessibility to research outcomes through open access collections.
What do Repositories have to do with Research Administration?
During the Research Quality Framework (RQF) preparations and implementation of the research Accessibilty Framework, greater emphasis was placed on the importance of research outputs (publications) as indicators of the quality and impact of university research. The Accessibility Framework was a federally funded intitiative to improve access to the outcomes of publicly funded research and saw several large scale repository projects implemented in the higher education sector. Most universities have implemented digital repositories to enhance access to their research outputs. The RQF coupled with the Accessibility Framework by pushing for publications nominated for quality assessment to be made available via insitutions' digital repositories. This trend has been maintained with many research offices now working closely with their institution's repository manager (typically the provence of the university Library) to collect and manage research publication data and eprints. The momentum toward integrating research office publications management and repository functions has been discussed at forums such as Directions in Research Systems and Repositories. The role of repostiories in the Excellence in Research for Austrlia (ERA) is still not known, though it is clear the push to maintain open access to the outcomes of publicly funded research will continue as indicated in a 2008 presentation by Leanne Harvey, 'The Future of the Accessibility Framework and Research Assessment' (http://www.apsr.edu.au/open_access_collections/presentations.html
).
Repositories and the HERDC
Repositories are playing an increasing role in the management of publications collected as part of the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC). The ARROW project has investigated possible roles repositories may play in the collection and management of publications data and will prepare a Joint ARROW-HERDC report outlining its investigations in this area. Chair of the Joint ARROW-HERDC Working Party, Teula Morgan from Swinburne University, provided an outline of Repository<-->HERDC interactions at the May 2008 "Directions in Research Systems and Repositories" forum: Directions in Research Systems and Repositories.
In June 2008 the The ARROW HERDC working group released an interim report for discussion, available from: http://arrow.edu.au/docs/files/arrow-herdc-interimreport-june08.pdf
A number of univeristy libraries are assisting in the identification and collection of bibliographic details of publications for inclusion in HERDC returns as well as collecting eprints to be stored in the institution's digital repository.
Useful Links
APSR - Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (http://www.apsr.edu.au/)
ARROW - Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (http://www.arrow.edu.au/)
RUBRIC - Regional Universities Building Research Infrastructure Collaboratively (http://www.rubric.edu.au/)
