US Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Report on Institutional Repositories

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SUMMARY: An ARL survey of US Institutional Repositories (IRs) reports:

"IR and library staff use a variety of strategies to recruit content: 83% made presentations to faculty and others, 78% identified and encouraged likely depositors, 78% had library subject specialists act as advocates, 64% offered to deposit materials for authors, and 50% offered to digitize materials and deposit them."
      But so far, no US university has yet adopted a self-archiving mandate. US Provosts ought to try adopting one: All evidence is that it trumps all other strategies for recruiting content (as Arthur Sale's analyses have been showing), and that it works!

"[Of the 87/123] responding ARL libraries 37 (43%) have an IR."
       But according to ROAR, there are at least 200 OAI-compliant archives in the US, 115 of them institutional or departmental IRs, 18 of them e-thesis IRs.

"Since 2002, when DSpace and other institutional repository (IR) software began to be available..."
      But EPrints, the first and most widely used IR software, became available in 2000...

"By a large majority, the most frequently used local IR software was DSpace, with... bepress [second]"
       But for the US ROAR currently lists 55 DSpace, 52 EPrints, and 44 Bepress archives. The corresponding worldwide figures are: 210 EPrints, 167 DSpace and 53 Bepress.

"The average IR start-up cost has been around $182,500 and its average ongoing operation budget is about $113,500."
      For some less daunting IR cost estimates, see here and here.

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The ARL SPEC Kit 292: INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES wrote:

"Since 2002, when DSpace and other institutional repository (IR) software began to be available..."

I wonder why ARL refers to 2002 when EPrints, the first and most widely used IR software, was created in 2000!

(Both EPrints and DSpace were created by the same developer, by the way: then Southampton doctoral student Rob Tansley. Rob created EPrints first, according to our specs for OA, at Southampton -- before he was poached by HP and MIT! Since then, EPrints has continued to evolve to meet the emerging needs of the worldwide OA movement, still under Southampton's specs, but now under the tender care of Rob's successor and Eprints' current award-winning developer, Southampton's Chris Gutteridge. Rob has since moved on to google.)

"The survey was distributed to the 123 ARL member libraries in January 2006. Eighty-seven libraries (71%) responded to the survey. Of those, 37 (43%) have an operational IR..."

According to the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), there are at least 200 OAI-compliant archives in the US, 115 of them institutional or departmental IRs, 18 of them e-thesis IRs.

"By a large majority, the most frequently used local IR software was DSpace, with DigitalCommons (or the bepress software it is based on) being the system of choice for vendor-hosted systems."

Out of the current ROAR total for US OAI archives (200):

DSpace: 55
EPrints: 52
Bepress: 44

The corresponding worldwide figures are:

EPrints: 210
DSpace: 167
Bepress: 53

"The mean number of digital objects in implementers' IRs was 3,844."

What percentage of those were full texts of OA target content (peer-reviewed research)?

"The average IR start-up cost has been around $182,500 and its average ongoing operation budget is about $113,500."

That would be a figure worth breaking down by software used.

For some less daunting cost estimates (for OA-focussed IRs that know their target content -- institutional peer-reviewed research output -- and know how and why to get it deposited) see here and here.

[A calculation by IR policy and content, with a quick calculation of the cost per paper (full text!) might prove revealing too.]

"Only 41% of implementers had no review of deposited documents. While review by designated departmental or unit officials was the most common method (35%), IR staff reviewed documents 21% of the time."

It would be interesting to calculate the correlation between whether an IR had a review-bottleneck in depositing and the number of full-text deposits (eliminating proxy deposits). (Prediction: The unbottlenecked IRs will be much fuller.)

"60% of implementers said that IR staff entered simple metadata for authorized users and 57% said that they enhanced such data. Thirty-one percent said that they catalogued IR materials completely using local standards."

Obviously library proxy depositing has to be analyzed separately from direct deposits by authors (or their assigns).

"IR and library staff use a variety of strategies to recruit content: 83% made presentations to faculty and others, 78% identified and encouraged likely depositors, 78% had library subject specialists act as advocates, 64% offered to deposit materials for authors, and 50% offered to digitize materials and deposit them."

No US university yet has a self-archiving mandate. US Provosts ought to try that: They might find it trumps all other factors in recruiting content (as Arthur Sale's analyses have been showing)!

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum