Why are Institutional Repositories important, and why should you devote your time to establishing one?
- Institutional Value - By collecting gray literature and other products of scholarship, an IR can preserve a record of institutional history and research that includes not only scholarly articles but also reports, working papers, lectures, data sets, course notes, conference proceedings, and learning objects.
- Promotional Opportunities - Depositing materials in an IR is a way to give back to the local community. Providing open access to research can enhance the profile of the institution and provide the public with a new way of appreciating and understanding what a university or college does.
- Historical Preservation - An IR makes a long-term commitment to preserve materials in deposited in certain digital formats. Preservation can include data migration services.
- Convenience - Materials in the repository will be crawled by search engines and easily accessible. As a result, open access articles are frequently cited more often than non-open access articles.
- Copyright - IRs don't take away copyright, authors can deposit items and still retain control of their work. Most publishers allow authors to self-archive a version of their articles.
- Taxpayer Access - IRs provide a way for an institution to give back to the community by providing open access to the research taxpayers support.
- Information Wants to be Free - The traditional publishing model places information behind price and access barriers. Libraries are forced to make difficult choices about the research materials they are able to purchase. IRs provide a way to restore balance by making information freely available.
- Traditional Library Role - IRs provide a way for a library to translate its traditional role of collecting and preserving information to the digital age.
