• Provides access to the intellectual property of an institution through a single web interface and provides long term physical storage of items in a secure archive
  
  
• Indexed by Google Scholar, OAIster, and other search engines, so the materials are searchable via the Internet and accessible to everyone thus reaching a world wide audience
  
  
• Offers fast and efficient publication and dissemination of materials such as gray literature, presentations, conference proceedings, research data, and more. Even articles, published in traditional materials can be placed in an Institutional Repository after they have been published to reach a larger audience.
  
  
• An author/creator is supplied with a long term stable URL that can be used in a citation to directly link to the item in the years to come
  
  
• It is FREE - there are no costs to you or to your department to add materials to the Institutional Repository.

Archiving online information and Institutional Repositories are just part of the discussion on the changing aspects of Scholarly Communication. As journal subscriptions increase in price, Libraries around the country are faced with the tough decisions to reduce journal subscriptions. In addition, publishers restrictions on self-archiving (post a copy of an article online in an Institutional Repository or Departmental web page) reduce the flow of scholarly communication by restricting access to those who can afford to purchase the journals. In essence, this signals a decrease in access to information on which future ideas and research can be built. So what can be done? Besides archiving information in an Institutional Repostitory, the Open Access movement provides an alternative to the high costs of traditional publishing. Open access means that information is freely available on the Internet. Some places have even created open access journals in which all articles published online in the journal are made freely available to a world wide audience. Some of the journals even have an editorial process in which the articles are peer-reviewed just like they would be in a traditional print publication. Moveover, there has been several recent acts to make information freely available online. The 2004 NIH Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-funded Research requests that authors provide free access to any article based on NIH funded research after a 12 month embargo. Please note: the day after Christmas, President Bush signed an omnibus spending bill containing a provision requiring the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate open access for NIH funded research. To see more on this, please go to: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/an-open-access-mandate-fo.html. The Federal Research Public Access Act hopes to expand the idea of free access to any article stemming from federally funded research. For more information on Open Access, please see the links below. The future of scholarly communication is uncertain, and the Library encourages you to discuss the ideas with your colleagues, fellow staff members and students to address the problems facing scholarly communication today.



Some Articles on Institutional Repositories, Scholarly Communication, and Open Access

• Antleman, Kristin. "Do Open Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?" College and Research Libraries 65, no. 5 (Sept. 2004): 372-382. Available at: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00002309/ (Accessed: 18 January 2007).
  
  
• Atkinson, Richard C. "A New World of Scholarly Communication" Chronicle of Higher Education 50, no. 11, (Nov. 7, 2003): B16. Available at: http://www2.library.ucla.edu/libraries/2002.cfm (Accessed: 5 June 2007).
  
  
• Crow, Raym. “The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper.” ARL Bimonthly Report 223 (August 2002).
  
  
• Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA). Information available at: http://www.arl.org/sparc/resources/frpaa.html (Accessed 20 February 2007).
  For an update on the status of FRPAA legislation, visit the Alliance for Taxpayer Access at: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/ (Accessed: 19 March 2007).
  
  
• Harnad, Stevan and Tim Brody. "Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals." D-Lib Magazine 10, no. 6 (June 2004). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june04/harnad/06harnad.html (Accessed: 18 January 2007).
  
  
• Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences on February 12, 2008 approved a measure to give the University a worldwide license to make each faculty member's scholarly articles available and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. Harvard will take advantage of the license by hosting FAS faculty's scholarly articles in an open access repository, making them available worldwide for free. The faculty member will retain the copyright in the article, subject to the University's license. For more on this announcment, see the news release at: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/home/news_and_events/releases/scholarly_02122008.html
  
  
• Harvard Law School faculty unanimously voted last week to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free, making HLS the first law school to commit to open access. For more information on this event, see the news release at: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2008/05/07_openaccess.php
  
  
• Johnson, Richard K. "Institutional Repositories: Partnering with Faculty to Enhance Scholarly Communication." D-Lib Magazine 8, no. 11 (Nov. 2002). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november02/johnson/11johnson.html (Accessed: 18 January 2007).
  
  
• Lawrence, Steve. "Free Online Availability Substantially Increases a Paper's Impact." Nature 411, no. 6837 (May 2001): 521. Available at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6837/full/411521a0.html (Accessed: 18 January 2007).
  
  
• Lynch, Clifford A. "Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age." ARL Bimonthly Report 226 (February 2003). Available at: http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml (Accessed: 20 February 2007).
  
  
• National Institutes of Health. Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research. Information available at: http://www.arl.org/sparc/oa/nih.html. For an update on the status of this resolution, please see: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/an-open-access-mandate-fo.html
  
  
• Nguyen, Thinh. "Open Doors and Open Minds: What Faculty Authors can do to Ensure Open Access to their Work through their Institution." SPARC/SCIENCE COMMONS WHITE PAPER (April 2008). Available online at: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/guides/opendoors_v1.shtml (Accessed: 30 April 2008).
  
  
• Prosser, David. "Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century -the Impact of New Technologies and Models." Available at: http://www.sparceurope.org/resources/SPARC_europe_serials_paper.doc (Accessed: 20 February 2007).
  
  
• Rovner, Sophie L. "Online Archives on a Bumpy Road." Chemical and Engineering News 84, no. 33 (Aug. 14, 2006): 50-53.
  
  
• Van de Sompel, Herbert and Sandy Payette, John Erickson, Carl Lagoze, Simeon Warner. "Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System that Scholars Deserve." D-Lib Magazine 10, no. 9 (Sept. 2004). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september04/vandesompel/09vandesompel.html (Accessed: 18 January 2007).
  
  
• Ward, Gary. " Deconstructing the Arguments Against Improved Public Access." ASCB Newsletter 29, no. 11 (November 2006): 1,6-9. Available at: http://www.ascb.org/files/0611newsletter.pdf (Accessed: 19 March 2007).
  
  
• Ware, Mark. "Institutional Repositories and Scholarly Publishing." Learned Publishing 17, no. 2 (April 2004): 115-124.