Supporting and enhancing scholarship in the digital age: the role of open access institutional repositories

Abstract

Scholarly communication and publishing are increasingly taking place in the electronic environment. With a growing proportion of the scholarly record now existing only in digital format, serious and pressing issues regarding access and preservation are being raised that are central to future scholarship. At the same time, the desire of scholars to maximize readership of their research and to take control of the scholarly communication process back from the restrictive domain of commercial publishing has prompted the proliferation of access options and experimental models of publishing. This paper examines the emerging trend of university-based institutional repositories (IRs) designed to capture the scholarly output of an institution and to maximize the research impact of this output. The relationship of this trend to the open access movement is discussed and challenges and opportunities for using IRs to promote new modes of scholarship are provided.