Increasing Usage

Getting content into your repository is one thing, but it is also important to encourage people to use it. All repository software comes with a search interface, and a local search interface is indeed vital, but it is not likely to be heavily used. This is because most researchers prefer to cross-search as many repositories as possible, rather than a series of individual repositories. Consequently, they will use a general search engine such as Google or a repository aggregating service such as OAIster or OpenDOAR Content Search. The key to successful usage is therefore to encourage services such as these to index the items in your repository by ensuring technical compatibility and by making your re-use policies clear.

There are also a number of ways you increase usage within your institution through advocacy campaigns, encouraging people to link to the repository, or even incorporating it into administrative processes.

Registering Repositories

A good way to let the world know about your repository is to register it with directories of repositories such as OpenDOAR and ROAR. In addition to being used by humans, these databases are also used by some search engines and aggregating services to control their indexing robots.

Search Engines

Search engines such as Google Scholar, Yahoo! Search and Live Search use robots called web crawlers to index web pages. These find web pages by following internal links, so it therefore wise to check that your repository is browsable both by robots and people, and to check that its website structure is suitable. If necessary, it is also possible to block robots from indexing certain pages or groups of pages.

Harvesting & OAI-PMH

The alternative to web crawling is 'harvesting'. In principle, this involves copying information from your repository into a service provider's own database. The Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a machine-to-machine (m2m) interface that is specifically designed to facilitate the harvesting of metadata from Open Access repositories, and the vast majority of repositories provide this option. However, OAI-PMH only relates to metadata, and many people want to be able to harvest the corresponding full texts too. There are alternative m2m interfaces and interface standards such as SOAP, REST, etc, that may be more useful. However, these alternatives have the disadvantage that their implementation is patchy compared to OAI-PMH.

Metadata Formats

As standard, OAI-PMH returns metadata from a repository using the Dublin Core (DC) schema. This is adequate for many purposes, but some people required a more detailed breakdown of the fields. Consequently, a richer version is also available called Qualified Dublin Core (qDC). Additionally, there are specialised schemas tailored for specific purposes, including: DIDL, MARC,METS, and MODS. OAI-PMH can accommodate any number of metadata formats, but the implemented selection varies greatly from repository to repository.

Reviewing Re-use Policies

Third parties should check they have your permission before they harvest information from your repository. Well-known general search engines controversially tend to index and cache everything regardless, but this tends to be tolerated because as they are generally beneficial in directing users to your site. Permission could be more important for non-search applications such as data mining. If you want encourage people to re-use the information in your repository (or to prevent it), you should check that you have suitable re-use policies and that they are readily accessible. You may wish to have different policies for metadata re-use and for full item re-use.

Internal Exploitation

While there may be very little you can do to encourage usage of your repository outside your institution, you can do your bit by encouraging the use of Open Access resources within your institution, and of Open Access resources generally. You can cultivate a close a relationship with your Public Relations department so that links to repository items are included in press releases wherever possible. This can also be backed up with repository news feeds. It is possible to get your local staff and students to use your repository to add value to their own work. This can be of benefit to the repository itself because it builds the repository into the institution's general infrastructure. A heavyweight application is to tie the repository into gathering of publications for research management and with assessment exercises such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The repository can be used by academic departments to provide publications lists, and could even tie in with performance reviews.

Planning Checklist

This planning checklists offers as a series of key questions designed to ‘make you think' about the topic of increasing usage of your repository.