Sarah

For the overview of the Australian experience, see the following papers:

http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/archive/00000222/ (electronic theses)

http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/archive/00000230/ (OA IRs, but the graph is not updated and this is a preprint)

http://leven.comp.utas.edu.au/AuseAccess/pmwiki.php?n=General.DepositPolicy (the deposit policy page on the AuseAccess wiki – the updated graph for the previous link [to 1 Jan 2006] is on this page) (you may also be interested in other pages on this wiki)

In brief answer to the issues you raise:

The strategy used to populate the IR

There are only two major strategies:

· voluntary policies, which regardless of the effort achieve less than 15% of available content (usually much less). The effort and any detailed tactics do not seem to matter much. In Australia, the University of Queensland, University of Melbourne and ourselves have put a lot of effort into value-adding and promoting, with virtually no effect. I now regard it as pointless to categorize various sub-strategies within voluntary polices, since they are demonstrated to not work. This is consistent internationally, without exception. In fact if a university is satisfied with 15% content, one wonders why they bother to waste their money.

· requirement policies (aka ‘mandatory’) which seem to work also regardless of how they are implemented. The key strategy is to ‘routinize’ deposit, so that deposit becomes a normal and expected part of the researcher’s activity. Draconian penalties are not needed, just publishing of an expectation and maybe linkage with funding, such as grant success or research infrastructure funding. In the UK, one way of making a requirement policy work is to link it with the RAE (in Australia the analog is the Research Quality Framework RQF).

The approximate cost of content policies

All strategies cost about the same.

· A huge effort by the champions to get the policy adopted

· Negligible hardware, software and ICT maintenance costs, say well under $A10k/yr (if not, then there is either incompetence or a hidden agenda)

· Perhaps a half-time person allocated to manage deposit, quality control, answer queries, etc.

Success of the strategy in terms of increased content

See the papers above. Although the thesis one may seem less relevant it has more sophisticated modeling and the experiment has been running longer. Rates in 90%-100% seem achievable with a requirement policy and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is building towards that. In the UK, Southampton is the exemplar of good strategy.

I am happy to answer questions, or continue this discussion.

Arthur Sale

Professor of Computing (Research)

University of Tasmania

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------

> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:58:24 +0000

> From: Sarah Kaufman <[log in to unmask]>

> To: [log in to unmask]

> Subject: Repository content

> Dear all,

> Here at Manchester Metropolitan University, we are currently in the process of setting

> up

> our institutional repository. At this moment, we have yet to populate the repository,

> and

> have yet to establish the best ways in which to get content for the repository and at

> the

> same time raising awareness of the service.

> Among the strategies currently considered for this task are speaking to research

> directors (either face-to-face or via e-mail), contacting academics that have published

> widely, producing publicity and publishing articles in university

> publications/newsletters, and being present at departmental meetings, to speak

> directly

> about the repository and answer any questions/concerns. Of course, doing all this

> does not

> guarantee content, and we have discovered that although many academics are willing

> and

> interested, actually getting hold of the content is another matter entirely. We have yet

> to establish whether or not we are going to offer a mediated service or are going to

> encourage self-archiving. Reasons for not getting the content include fears of

> copyright

> infringement and misunderstanding of the issues; I rather suspect that some may feel

> whatever they have to do to contribute will take up too much time.

> How have other repositories gone about a) raising awareness of the repository and b)

> having raised awareness, getting content for submission into the repository? Have you

> encountered any problems with trying to promote a service still very much in its

> infancy

> and with little (or no) content? Have you found that the more content you have, the

> more

> willing others are to deposit?

> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

> Many thanks.

> Sarah Kaufman

> -------------------------------------------------------------

> Sarah Kaufman

> Assistant Librarian

> Electronic Services Development Team/e-space

> Manchester Metropolitan University

> Minshull House

> 47 - 49 Chorlton Street

> Manchester

> M1 3FY

> (0161) 247 6115 (ESDT)

> (0161) 247 6677 (e-space)

> [log in to unmask]

> http://www.mmu.ac.uk/library

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