Andy,
I'd be inclined to start from a less analytic position, and to say that a good repository in the future would be one which functioned as part of a business process which meets the requirements of the academic community, in terms of both dissemination of research and the re-use of data, and that this business process should be substantially cheaper and simpler than the existing one.
Translate the phrase 'general public' into 'business community' and you can imagine how much hot water you might land yourself in...
Philip
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-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andy Powell
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 3:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What makes a good repository?
Citation strikes me as primarily being an indicator of reading (i.e. use) rather than re-use? (OK, you/I need to define 're-use' here! :-) ).
Under d I think you need to separate out usefulness to the academic community (i.e. to other researchers?) from usefulness to the general public (which surely is of secondary importance?).
I'm probably stating the obvious here... but counts of 'deposits', 'downloads' and 'citations' (roughly your c1, c2, and c3) are indicative of usefulness to depositors, readers and other researchers (roughly your d1, d2 and d3(ish - see above). In other words, c is the measure for d ??
I think that c1 can only be measured as a proportion of the total scholarly output within the target community of depositors (i.e. an absolute number of deposits isn't all that interesting). It would be nice to measure c2 in a similar way (downloads from repository as a proportion of total downloads including paid-for accesses or somesuch) but I can't really see how that might be done. As you indicate, c3 is problematic to measure given current citation practice.
I think one could make the argument that c1 (as undertaken by researchers themselves) is a good single metric for overall usefulness (on the basis that no-one would willingly take time to deposit something in a repository unless they were confident of it leading to increased downloads and citation). Mandates completely skew that unfortunately... and, in any case, it is/was presumably hard to determine real researcher-initiated deposits from those down by intermediaries (which, again, skews the picture)?
Sorry... just thinking out loud. No real help at all!
Andy
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-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Rusbridge
Sent: 07 March 2011 11:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: What makes a good repository?
I'm interested in the question "what makes a good repository?". Or perhaps, given a particular repository, how could we assess whether it is doing its job well? Or, well enough... to be sustainable?
I've been given various answers starting from
a) the repository meets its (defined) goals.
OK, sounds reasonable, but the goals were probably defined in the past, perhaps even before the repository existed. That was then; this is a different world. How about...
b) the repository meets real needs.
Yes, I like that. But what are those real needs? I can think of two groups that sound similar but are subtly different...
c) the repository is (well) used
c1) by depositors
c2) by readers
c3) by re-users.
(There are probably more important subtypes of users.) This is the set we often measure: c1 by total deposited items or by rates of deposit, c2 by accesses and downloads. We less often measure c3, but citations and in-links could be reasonable proxies. Both are slightly muddy as many repositories contain substitutes for the version of record, and good practice is to cite the latter (but perhaps more often link to the substitute). But how about...
d) the repository is useful
d1) to depositors
d2) to its owner
d3) to the public in general
(Again this might not be the right set of subtypes.) The first of these, d1 is not the same as c1; repositories might be used without being useful to depositors. This might be because of mandates, perhaps, or by being "used" by librarians acting for the depositors without much motivation by the depositors. Much better where the repository is useful to the depositor. This (I think) is what the various "Negative Click Repository" posts were about (see posts in http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/search/label/Negative%20click), and I think it's part of the thrust of Steve Hitchcock's DepositMO project (http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/depositmo/).
Sustainability is in part about continuing to convince decision makers to keep paying the costs, so being demonstrably useful to the owner (d2) seems pretty important.
The last subtype (d3) I've made as general as possible, believing that there is a real public-spirit, philanthropic nature to most institutions that run repositories, as well as a belief that good deeds can come back to reward us (casting our bread upon the waters?).
I'm interested in any comments on these ideas, and particularly interested in any suggestions for measures of the (d) group. Does this make sense?
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Chris Rusbridge
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