instutional repositories and data

Institutional Repositories and Data

Andrew Treloar, ANDS

03/05/2023 CC-BY @atreloar 2

Context• Scholarly Communication Functions• Registration• Certification• Awareness• Archiving• [Rewarding]Roosendaal, H., and Geurts, P. 1997. “Forces and functions in scientific communication: an analysis of their interplay”. Cooperative Research Information Systems in Physics, August 31—September 4 1997, Oldenburg, Germany, via Van de Sompel, et al., “Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System that Scholars Deserve”. D-Lib Magazine, September 2004. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september04/vandesompel/09vandesompel.htm

03/05/2023 CC-BY @atreloar 3

Purpose• “a university-based institutional

repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members”

Lynch, C., “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age”, portal: Libraries and the Academy, Volume 3, Number 2, April 2003, pp. 327-336

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Affordances• Deposit• can support Registration

• Manage• may contribute to Archiving

• Find• may assist with Awareness

• Access• may assist with Certification and Rewarding

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Initially• Deposit:

• publications• via upload

• Manage: • small {size|number} objects• simple (DC) metadata

• Discover:• directly• aggregators (OAI-PMH)

• Access• download

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Early solutions

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But data…• Initially supplementary• Later 1st class• JASO• “Institutional repositories can support new

practices of scholarship that emphasize data as an integral part of the record and discourse of scholarship.” Lynch, p. 332

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Data• Deposit:• uploads time out

• Manage: • large {size|number} objects• complex disciplinary–specific metadata

• Discover:• more difficult because need metadata (no full

text)• Access• downloads time out or don’t make sense• hard to support in-situ access for re-use

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Stages• Denial

• “Our users only want to deposit publications”• Anger

• “Data aren’t a real scholarly output!”• Bargaining

• “I suppose we can take *some* data”• Depression

• “what are we going to do with this 36GB dataset?”• Acceptance

• “Let’s work out the best approach”

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Solution patterns• Restrict• size and number of objects

• Refer• store elsewhere and point

• Adapt• reengineer underlying software to provide

more robust storage layer• “Fedora 4.0 supports large files … uploading

content to the repository and pulling it down via the REST API has been successfully tested with files up to 1-TB”

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Now• IRs still mostly publications• but becoming more integrated with broader

research information management ecosystem

• Data often stored elsewhere• on-campus stores• cloud offerings

• But• who is managing the data?• is this what we want?• does anybody (other than us) care?

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Future• “NHMRC encourages researchers to disseminate and

share their research data through publicly accessible databases or repositories”

• PLOS recommends “appropriate public [discipline-specific or generalist] repositories” for associated data

• “ACS is facilitating automated deposition of Supporting Information (SI) files to a secure hosting environment [figshare], free from any restrictions on size and format”

• Mendeley Data: “The data submitted by researchers on this platform will be included in the long-term archive of DANS”

• Elsevier links to PANGAEA

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Data role for IRs• “management and dissemination of

digital materials created by the institution” (Lynch)• Parallel offering to offset ecosystem

fluidity• Owned by an organisation that is likely to

last and that should care about its outputs• But is this enough?

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Questions/Arguments?• @atreloar• andrew.treloar.net• andrew.treloar@ands.org.au