Eddie Neuwirth and Adi Alter, Ex Libris
Institutional repositories that collect a university’s research assets in one place and make them publicly available serve an important role. But in many ways, the repositories that exist today aren’t meeting the needs of libraries or of the research community effectively. A new approach to research information management is needed.
1. Lack of structure and efficient workflows
These repositories often lack a clear and cohesive structure, which makes research assets hard to find. They’re also cumbersome to maintain, with inefficient workflows that make it hard to deposit new research output, link publications with their underlying data sets, and add comprehensive metadata to make these assets discoverable.
As a result, the research assets of universities aren’t being showcased as well as they could be, and staff are spending too much time on labor-intensive tasks.
