Repositories that Support Research Management

The aim of institutional repositories has focused on serving the interests of faculty – researchers and teachers – by collecting their intellectual outputs for long-term access, preservation and management. However, management are members of an institution too, and can reasonably ask for the repository to provide services that assist in the task of research management.

There is also an entirely pragmatic argument for supporting management agendas: experience shows that in order to attain the engagement of the faculty, it is necessary to obtain the support of the institutional management. But in order to gain management support, a repository has to demonstrate a measureable and effective contribution to current management agendas and concerns – e.g. research management or research assessment.

Background Reading

Institutional Repository Checklist for Serving Institutional Management

This document is a For Discussion draft that came from the Research Assessment Experience session at Open Repositories 2008. Comment is invited from managers of all repository platforms to share experience of the demands of the processes involved in supporting research assessment at an institutional level.  In particular, the demands placed on an institutional reporting tool are greater than normal. This document lists the success criteria as distilled from the authors' recent experience.

Carr, L., White, W. and Brown, M. (2008) Collecting & Verifying RAE Output. Presentation at: Beyond the RAE 2008: Bibliometrics, League Tables and the REF, 30th April 2008, Kings College, London.

This presentation was given as a reflective summary of the University of SOuthampton's experience in using their repository for collecting evidence for the UK's national Research Assessment Exercise.