Eprint Repository

Aim:

To establish a self-archiving institutional repository of research papers for the University of Melbourne.

The Open Archives Initiative has established international standards for setting up cross-searchable repositories of research papers. The Information Division has used these standards to create an institutional repository. These standards have been endorsed by academic institutions throughout the western world.

Examples: University of Nottingham, Glasgow University, University of Rochester.

Benefits for the University:

Increased international exposure for research papers emanating from University of Melbourne. Use of the software will facilitate international exposure for these papers, through a search engine which enables cross institutional searching. (It is common for academic departments in many disciplines to maintain departmental servers of working and research papers. The drawback to departmental servers is the lack of ability to search across a range of institutions and departments.)

• The increased exposure will improve the opportunity for impact of University of Melbourne researchers in the international academic arena.
• Ability to see which are the most viewed papers and what sites are accessing the papers This will give academics, their departments, and the University administration data on the impact that University of Melbourne research has upon international colleagues.
• The software enables online commentary by colleagues.
• The software provides an alerting service for new eprints.
• The software allows cloning of an existing paper so that revised versions are less time consuming to load.
• The software provides the facility to track revisions or different versions of papers

Note: The research papers may be housed in more than one location: they may be retained on departmental servers as well as on the institutional repository.