Defining Scope

Importance of Scoping | Factors to Consider | Content Types | Resource Bank

Importance of Scoping

To ensure consistency it is important to clearly define the content and scope of a repository. This is particularly important where more than one person manages acceptance of deposits and is invaluable when new staff are recruited or duties are reassigned. The scope of the repository should be defined in your policy documents.

Factors to Consider

In defining the content and scope of a repository the current needs of the institutions and its researchers, the resources available to the repository, as well as future plans for the repository's development should all be taken into account.

It is also important to remember that the level of work required to develop and maintain a repository will depend on the scope of the repository. For example, will it hold only research articles or will it include multimedia objects and be integrated into the institutional virtual learning environment?

Also IPR and copyright issues vary depending content type and expertise must be available to provide advice on these issues.

Another factor to be considered is whether the repository should hold only records that link to full text or if metadata-only records will also be accepted. The majority of repositories in the UK contain both metadata-only records and records that link to full text. The reasons for this vary between institutions and may be a political, policy or legacy issue.

The main advantage of including metadata-only records is that the repository can then also be used as a publications database to serve other needs within the institution. The main disadvantage of holding metadata-only records in a repository is that search services cannot easily distinguish between records that link to full text and those that do not. As a consequence researchers become frustrated and disappointed if they find what they think is an OA copy of an article but then cannot access the full-text. The recent (2007) DRIVER Guidelines propose a solution to this problem by recommending that repositories implement full-text sets to allow search service providers to distinguish between full text and metadata-only records automatically. However, wide-scale adoption of these recommendations has yet to occur.

Content Types

OpenDOAR provides a brief description of content commonly found in repositories at the time of site audit or update. The major content types listed in OpenDOAR are:

• Publications - Preprints/Postprints
• Bibliographic references (metadata only)
• Books & chapters
• Conference & workshop papers
• Theses & Dissertations
• Unpublished reports & working papers
• Datasets
• Learning objects
• Multimedia & audio-visual materials
• Software
• Patents
• Special items

See also: Expanding Content > Content Types for some definitions of the various types.

There may be a desire to clarify content type with greater precision than this by repository administrators, as there may be considered areas of overlap between these content types. The broader importance of content policies for repositories and for end-users and search services is covered in greater detail elsewhere.