Project background
In the last five years considerable interest has grown within the academic community in the use of institutional repositories.
In its simplest form an institutional repository is a place where individuals can store digital copies of their scholarly work and make these materials freely and easily accessible to others.
As of November 2007, six of the seven major UK research councils (AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC and STFC) have mandated that, works describing the outcomes of their funded research should be made freely available (EPSRC is undertaking an independent study which will report in late 2008).
For latest information on these mandates visit the Research Councils UK statement on Access to Research Outputs.
Other research funding bodies have similarly mandated, including the Arthritis Research Campaign, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Department of Health, Joint Information Systems Committee and Wellcome Trust.
Visit the Sherpa/Juliet website for a summary of research council mandates.
In practice these mandates mean that research councils now expect researchers (and their affiliated institutes) to make every effort to ensure their research findings are available free-of-charge and easily accessible.
Copyright is an often cited problem with making research findings freely available. A normal practice in academic publishing is to sign over the copyright of the work to the publisher. Many journal publishers now recognise the benefits of free access to their articles and as a consequence have adjusted their copyright policies to accommodate this. The SHERPA/RoMEO website lists publishers that allow published articles to be made freely available.
Considerable research and development on the use of institutional repositories has already been conducted. There are now around 1,000 institutional repositories world-wide, of which over 100 are located in the UK. Additionally, there is a significant and growing global ‘open access’ movement which aims to make all outcomes of research freely available.
An institutional repository can help an individual researcher manage, disseminate, and preserve their scholarly work. Furthermore, experience suggests it can increase the visibility and impact of their research findings as well as improve an institutions reputation and prestige. See
In response to the above developments, and in support of the University of Manchester’s 2015 agenda, the Vice President’s Research Group (chaired by Professors Nancy Rothwell and Simon Gaskell) requested John Rylands University Library to initiate this project with the aim to establish a repository service for the University of Manchester.