JISC

Institutional repositories are now becoming internationally recognised as an essential part of the infrastructure necessary to support scholarship in the 21st century. The portfolio of projects that JISC has funded as part of the FAIR initiative have provided important insight not only on technical matters, but also on institutional and disciplinary strategies for repositories and the broader social, legal, and economic context shaping the roles of repositories in the scholarly communication system.

Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, Washington

Foreword

Digital institutional resources which include research papers and data, images and theses are a highly valuable asset within educational institutions. The JISC funded “Focus on Access to Institutional Resources” (FAIR) Programme explored and evaluated different mechanisms for the disclosure and sharing of digital content, and the outcomes will be of particular significance to strategic managers, researchers, librarians and information professionals alike.

The Research Assessment Exercise will require institutions both to aggregate and disclose various research quality indicators (publications, esteem) and to demonstrate that the institution fosters an environment that supports world-class research.

Institutional information systems, including open access repositories, can support institutions as they address these requirements and those of other drivers, such as the wish to increase research citation ratings, to attract more funds into research budgets, and to enable intra- and inter- institutional collaboration.

This report summarises the outcomes from the FAIR Programme. It shows how information systems can be implemented that enable institutions to manage and disseminate their research assets so that they bring the maximum benefit to the institution, to the research community and to a wider audience.

The principles upon which these benefits can be achieved are those of quality and sound information management.

The main challenges are not technical. Instead they relate to clarity of purpose, quality control, metadata and semantics, legal issues (intellectual property, institutional liability), to ethical issues (consent) and cultural issues, research cultures and variations between disciplines in terms of methodologies and practices, and so on.

This report acknowledges the significant advances achieved by the FAIR programme, overcoming and learning from challenges, and securing benefits for the further and higher education communities. It also gives pointers to the next steps, which are being taken by a new generation of projects.

The participants in the many projects that made up the FAIR Programme should be congratulated for the progress that has been made and is evident in this report.

Alison Allden
Deputy Registrar and Director of Information Services, University of Bristol;
Chair of the JISC Integrated Information Environment Committee;
Chair of the FAIR Programme Advisory Board.

Introduction

The Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme was launched by JISC in 2002 to investigate the technical, organisational and cultural processes involved in providing access to institutional digital resources. Today, both further (FE) and higher Education (HE) institutions produce a large proportion of their documentary output in digital form: many non-documentary outputs are also digital in origin. The FAIR Programme has examined how these resources can be effectively disclosed and shared for use by others in the community, increasing their value and usefulness.

A major part of FAIR investigated how such sharing is influenced by cultural, organisational and legal factors. How welcome is the facility to share? How are existing processes of communication affected? What are the legal and copyright ramifications of sharing resources? The Programme has provided many valuable pointers in these areas for others wishing to tread the same path.

In considering the technical mechanisms through which such sharing can take place, FAIR has gathered experience and knowledge on the set-up of repositories, on the design of user interfaces, and on the development and configuration of software enabling access to shared resources and the management of these materials. Many of the systems used within FAIR and in related initiatives around the world are open source, offering a controllable and low-cost solution to sharing institutional resources.

The 14 projects funded under the Programme covered a wide variety of assets. These included existing resources – image and museum collections, datasets and learning materials – and also novel resources emanating from institutional research outputs: e-print articles and electronic theses and dissertations. The projects have successfully investigated the deposit and disclosure of these resources. The projects have also raised valuable additional questions and these are being pursued both within JISC and in collaboration with a range of partners.
This brochure seeks to provide an entry point for those interested in sharing institutional resources. It places the FAIR Programme in context, describes the main areas of work and key outputs from the projects, and looks ahead to how these might and are influencing institutional policy. It details the themes covered by the Programme and connects FAIR with similar and related initiatives both in the UK and abroad.

The FAIR programme has been extremely successful in exploring issues associated with open access and the deposit of publicly funded research outputs into open access repositories.
Chris Bailey, Director of Library Services, University of Glasgow

Landscape

The positive response to the FAIR call for proposals revealed a deep interest in making institutional resources more available. For a number of years, the web has made it possible to share resources, the emergence of catalogues and databases on the web, and the use of personal or departmental web sites has allowed access to many resources that were largely inaccessible prior to the advent of the web. But there were clear drivers amongst the FAIR projects that sought to take this a step further.

Research, Repositories and Open Access

A number of disciplines have developed places where researchers can deposit e-prints, largely research articles, for access by others in the same field. Examples include ArXiv, which has served the physics community for over 12 years, CogPrints in the psychology community, and RePeC for economics. These subject-based repositories have proved successful in enabling communication and fostering collaboration within the disciplines concerned. But they can be sporadic in their coverage and many disciplines have no such facility. Institutional repositories offer the opportunity for researchers to share their outputs with others in their subject and additionally offer a route for institutions to effectively manage their research output.

The use of repositories has commonly been based on the principle of providing open access to research outputs, speeding up the exchange of information, and breaking down barriers to access which the cost of formal publication processes can put in place. The open access movement has developed considerably since the FAIR Programme commenced; the Programme itself has influenced this, for example through representations to the UK Government Science & Technology Select Committee on Scientific Publications, and the development of the RoMEO database on publisher copyright agreements. But the projects have also benefited greatly from this confluence, able to combine their own developments with those from elsewhere, and providing more mature outputs as a result.

Concurrent with FAIR, there was a large rise in the number of institutional repository developments internationally as the value of managing an institution’s output and making this available was recognised. The DARE Programme in the Netherlands resulted in repositories being set up at all 13 of the nation’s universities; over 90 institutions have set up repositories in Germany, where there is an official certification process in place to ensure quality; the Australian Government is funding repository development to the tune of A$12M; and in the UK the Research Councils have announced that deposit of outputs from publicly funded research in repositories be mandated where these are available.

Many research paths start within the dissertations and theses produced by students. The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) initiative in the USA has done much to raise the profile of methods through which these documents can be shared more effectively electronically, and the richness within them disseminated more widely. Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs, as they are known internationally) are now global in scope and the NDLTD has representatives on its Board of Directors from South America, Africa and the Indian subcontinent as well as Europe and Australia; the Australian funding indicated above is, in part, also addressing theses.

The Wider Information Environment

Electronic research articles, or e-prints, and theses are indicative of how existing information can be re-formulated for use in a different environment through effective disclosure. But other material types can also benefit from this.

Sharing images can help to enhance associated text that is also being shared. Digital images are readily available nowadays, either through publicly funded collections such as the Education Image Gallery or commercial photo libraries. But cameras and phones now make it possible for individuals and organisations to generate digital image collections swiftly. These can be shared either as a resource in their own right or as an adjunct to associated information. In the museum sector this holds the potential of unlocking access to large collections of museum objects that there is no space to display physically; the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is actively engaged in how records might be shared and made accessible in this way through its 24Hour Museum project and the European Union has funded a number of projects (eg DigiCULT and BRICKS) examining how information and records might be shared in the cultural sector.

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) offers users the opportunity to find resources that are of interest to them. At the same time, organisations will find that their collections are discovered by new users that they would not have been able to reach.
David Dawson, Head of Digital Futures, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council

Images are also often a component part of learning materials, and how these might be shared has been addressed within JISC’s Exchange for Learning (X4L) Programme and the JORUM+ learning object repository in particular. Other such repositories, for example HLSI, exist, enabling learning materials to be shared within and between institutions, enabling good ideas and practice to be spread.
The advent of digital information in general has raised the issue of how it should be preserved for long-term use. The Digital Preservation Coalition, launched the year before FAIR started, coordinates international initiatives in this area and the National Libraries have recently received the remit of legally collecting digital publications in addition to those that are print-based. Many of the preservation strategies being used, for example LOCKSS, work on the basis that copies of the information and datasets are made. Effectively sharing this information is thus key to effective preservation.

Delivered to Your…

Making information available for sharing is one half of the equation. To effectively use the shared information it needs to be delivered within the information landscape that institutions provide to their users. Libraries continue to act as a beacon for information access, but end-users can be as familiar with their online learning or institutional portal environment, and require access to information through these routes. The mass of information now available, from a variety of sources, also requires careful management to ensure end-users can make sense of it.

A Culture of Sharing?

Information and data have long been shared between colleagues and collaborators as an essential part of learning and research processes. These followed both informal paths, for example sharing with known individuals, and formal paths, for example through book and journal publishing. The status quo has existed for many years. New initiatives for sharing are both ardently welcomed, as with advocates of open access, and regarded with deep scepticism. FAIR recognised that changes in the way information is shared and disseminated will not happen overnight. Patience and the provision of clear reasons why sharing is beneficial are the key.

However valuable it may be to share information openly there is a need to maintain control over this process. All digital information has inherent Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright: managing this is both a requirement and a challenge when sharing the information. The development of the Creative Commons licences whilst FAIR has been running has provided a welcome option to more formal copyright management. These licences seek to enable a culture of sharing, recognising that many want to share what they have produced without a heavy legal burden.

We Have the Technology

Underpinning all the FAIR projects and the Programme as a whole has been the investigation of technology to enable the sharing of different material types. The FAIR Programme was inspired by the vision of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). This vision, originating in the USA in 1999, seeks to enable the simple interchange of metadata (data about the resources themselves), a process known as harvesting, enabled through the OAI’s Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Such metadata can be shared without the need to move or copy the full resources until specifically requested.
The original priority within the OAI was on the exchange of information about research outputs, primarily e-prints. There was no limitation imposed, though, and it has quickly become apparent that the mechanisms involved could potentially be used for many other types of resource. The range of examples given at the established OAI Workshops in CERN make it clear that the use of this technology has inspired many to enable the sharing of many different types of resources.

Highlights and main achievements

The FAIR projects have achieved much during their lifetime. There have been many tangible outputs as well as a great deal of learning and experience on the issues surrounding the deposit and disclosure of assets. The experience gained has been shared at many events and in publications, reaching audiences both in the UK and abroad.

Each project has a number of key achievements which are highlighted in the following tables.
This brochure provides a summary overview of the outputs from the FAIR projects. A comprehensive listing, including further information where applicable, is available via the FAIR Synthesis website

e-prints and e-theses – a cluster of projects examining the deposit and disclosure of research outputs, primarily e-print articles and research theses in digital form.

Museums and Images – a cluster of projects examining the role of the deposit and disclosure of museum objects, images and arts & humanities datasets to support increased dissemination, awareness and preservation of theses.

Portals – two projects examining the provision of access to externally sourced content alongside internally surfaced assets.

The FAIR Enough Project highlighted the significant impact that … IPR and Copyright can have on the effective use of online resources.
James Clay, Director, Western Colleges Consortium

Common themes

Types of projects

e-Prints
Four of the FAIR projects have focused on developing e-print repositories – DAEDALUS, HaIRST, SHERPA and TARDis. They have explored the practical issues of building a repository, including selecting software, assigning metadata using Dublin Core, using the metadata for search and disclosure, and designing processes such as submission and workflow. Much work has also been done on the cultural aspects of repositories, and advocacy was an important component of these projects. Each has had to address how to ‘sell’ the concept of open access repositories to academics and develop strategies for populating their repositories. They have developed a wide range of advocacy materials to assist with this that will be useful to others.

The projects approached e-prints in a different way and explored complementary issues. For example, DAEDALUS and TARDis each developed their own e-print repositories, whereas SHERPA worked with 18 project partners to help them develop their own repositories and increase the range of UK research output available on open access. Where TARDis focused on publications, DAEDALUS and HaIRST explored how many different types of resources could be stored and shared. An interesting feature of TARDis is how the content in their repository can be reused within the institution, eg for the Research Assessment Exercise. SHERPA also addressed preservation.

Theses
Three projects focused on electronic theses and dissertations – DAEDALUS, Electronic Theses and Theses Alive!. Each implemented a pilot repository and gained practical experience exploring the requirements of ETDs, especially where ETDs are one of many research outputs present. They evaluated and compared repository software, and all three projects chose to use DSpace. They also developed processes for submission and workflow, and Theses Alive! developed a software add-on for DSpace (TAPIR) to support the submission of ETDs. They have also documented the processes associated with managing ETDs and developed guidelines that other institutions can adopt.

An important outcome has been their collaboration to develop national approaches and solutions for ETDs. Electronic Theses has led their work to develop a UK Metadata Core Set for ETDs, and this is now becoming a UK standard. Theses Alive! prepared a report on the legal aspects of ETDs, including model deposit licences and advice on topics such as intellectual property and freedom of information. They also collaborated to explore national models for ETDs, in consultation with the British Library. The Electronic Theses project held two seminars for the community in 2004 to present models and recommendations.

An important consideration these projects have had to address is that ‘going digital’ has implications for university regulations. Institutions have policies for how theses and dissertations must be submitted, stored and accessed. Changes may be needed to allow submission of electronic instead of paper or make electronic the default submission format. Electronic Theses has posted the new regulations for ETDs at Robert Gordon University on their website, and these could be a useful model for other institutions.

Museum Collections and Images
Three of the FAIR projects have focused on the special requirements of repositories containing non-text items such as images and museum objects – Accessing the Virtual Museum, BioMed Image Archive, and Harvesting the Fitzwilliam. The starting point for these projects was an established collection of images or museum objects, and a common theme was how the OAI standard could be used to disclose the collection to a wider audience.

An issue they all addressed was the development of a consistent set of records for their collections. This is particularly important for collections that have built over a number of years. For the museum collections, this involved creating new catalogue records, enhancing them with metadata, creating images of the objects, and introducing appropriate quality control. The BioMed Image Archive undertook an independent review of their images to ensure each was appropriate for presentation on the web, and an important outcome of the project was their criteria for review of medical images.

In addition to performing their project work separately, these projects (together with Hybrid Archives) worked as a group to explore issues related to using OAI for non-text objects. OAI mandates the minimum use of Dublin Core, which works well for publications such as e-prints, but has limitations when used for images and museum objects. This has implications for harvesting metadata, searching and disclosure. An important outcome of the FAIR Programme was the discussion papers these projects developed – on using metadata to describe cultural objects, cross-domain searching, and images in the metadata harvesting model.

OAI Service Providers
Institutions that develop repositories disclose the resources to their own users. A key objective of FAIR was to explore how the resources of individual institutions could be disclosed to the wider community, and the OAI-PMH standard enables this. ‘Service providers’ harvest metadata from individual OAI-compliant repositories, so users can search across many repositories.

Three FAIR projects developed OAI service providers and explored metadata harvesting from different perspectives. ePrints UK developed a pilot service harvesting metadata from subject-based and institutional e-print repositories. HaIRST explored the service provider concept within a consortium of FE/HE institutions. DAEDALUS focused on harvesting metadata from its own institutional repositories to provide a single search point to users.

For searching across repositories to be effective, the metadata that service providers harvest must be consistent and of good quality. OAI-PMH requires the minimum use of Dublin Core, and ePrints UK made an important contribution to FAIR by developing a set of good practice guidelines for using Dublin Core for e-prints for the FAIR e-print projects to use. ePrints UK has also worked with many OAI data providers to help them improve the quality and consistency of their metadata by identifying problems and recommending solutions.

Both ePrints UK and HaIRST explored how service provider pilots could be developed into true national services. ePrints UK harvested metadata from approximately 30 institutional repositories on a daily basis, explored the use of web services to enhance the metadata searching, and assessed whether the pilot service would be a useful national model for disclosing e-prints. The HaIRST experience of working with a consortium of Scottish FE/HE institutions could also be developed into a model for Scotland or for disclosing Scottish resources within the UK. HaIRST has already established the OAI Scotland Information Service (OAISIS), a website offering information and advice on OAI developments in Scotland.

Presenting Resources to Users

Two FAIR projects investigated the technical and cultural issues associated with presenting shared resources to users in an effective way and embedding JISC Collections and Services alongside local resources – PORTAL and FAIR Enough. PORTAL focused on the use of institutional portals in HE and FE, and FAIR Enough on VLEs and portals in FE. For both projects, understanding user needs and behaviour was important.

The PORTAL project undertook a wide range of studies to understand user needs. These are particularly significant as the project surveyed requirements across UK educational institutions, building a national picture, and will therefore be valuable for any institution implementing a portal. The studies involved consultation with over 600 stakeholders, and results are posted on the PORTAL website. They confirm that potential users are keen to access internal and external resources through a single interface, the needs of staff and students are different, and personalisation is important. The survey toolkit that they used for the user studies is also available for others to use.

As a researcher, I depend on access to information and ideas, and I want to make the information and ideas that I produce accessible to others in turn; I see institutional repositories as an efficient way of exploiting the potential of new technologies to speed up and extend the range of this exchange.
Malcolm Heath, Professor of Greek Language and Literature, University of Leeds

The FAIR Enough project conducted experiments to find out why electronic resources such as JISC Collections were underused and developed solutions to embedding them more effectively across a consortium of FE institutions. Their studies focused on the attitudes of staff towards issues such as using electronic resources, sharing learning materials, copyright, and the challenges of using new technologies. The experiments enabled them to understand the barriers so they could then develop cultural and technical solutions to more effective embedding.
Both PORTAL and FAIR Enough have demonstrated that having technology and electronic resources is only the starting point. They need to be presented to users (whether students or staff) in an effective way that is underpinned by an understanding of their needs and behaviour.

Setting up a Repository

FAIR projects have gained a wealth of experience in the strategic and practical issues involved in setting up institutional repositories. Many have posted reports and guidelines on their websites documenting their experience.

Planning Issues

What types of documents to include in a repository is an important decision. Some FAIR projects have decided to focus on one type of content, eg e-prints (TARDis) or ETDs (Electronic Theses). Others have opted to build a repository that contains many types of content, eg e-prints, ETDs, book chapters, presentations, etc (DAEDALUS and HaIRST). Some are expanding existing repositories of resources with a view to making them more accessible (eg Accessing the Virtual Museum). Deciding on what content to include is important, as this has implications for the software that is selected.
Another important decision is the purpose of the repository and who will use it. For example, is the purpose for academic authors to archive their research output, for teachers to create learning materials, or to preserve an institution’s digital resources? Will the repository be used primarily by staff within the institution, its departments, or a consortium of institutions, or is the main purpose to disclose the resources to the wider community?

The TARDis project made an interesting decision about the purpose of their e-print repository. They found that the internal benefits of having an institutional repository can be as important as the external benefits of making the research visible and accessible to the community. Having a central database of the institution’s publications means the institution can manage it effectively and reuse it in different ways. For example, academic staff will be able to use the repository to easily create publication lists for grant proposals and CVs. The university will use the repository to extract data on research activity for the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

Understanding Users

Whatever the purpose of the repository, it is important to understand users – the people who will deposit documents and then use the repository. Several FAIR projects started their work by conducting user studies to understand who their users would be, how they work, and their expectations. For example, the PORTAL project conducted extensive user studies to develop a national list of requirements for designing institutional portals. DAEDALUS and TARDis conducted studies to understand the practices within their academic departments for self-archiving e-prints. DAEDALUS found that this was not only helpful in understanding attitudes and practice, but also to identify the departments to target initially for depositing e-prints. Knowing as much as possible about users and their needs means you can design the repository to meet those needs and fit with how they work.

Practical Issues

Once decisions about the purpose, content and users of the repository have been decided, there are many practical issues to address. The information gathered can support the selection of appropriate software to suit the content the repository will contain and the features that will be important. It is then important to design submission and workflow processes so that users can easily deposit documents and to manage them within the repository. SHERPA, DAEDALUS, and TARDis have documented their processes for e-prints; Theses Alive! has done this for ETDs; and Harvesting the Fitzwilliam has reported this for museum collections.

Another practical issue is providing documentation for users to explain what the repository is and how to use it. Institutions developing their own repositories may wish to visit some of the FAIR project sites and see the guides they have prepared. For example, projects developing e-print repositories have typically written guides to explain what the repository is, how to deposit documents, and how to use the repository to find documents. Most have also written a guide to explain copyright. Before academic authors can deposit e-prints, they need to understand the copyright situation and what rights they need from their publisher in order to deposit the e-print. Finally, most have posted a short licence agreement for the author to sign.

Gathering Content

For repositories to be successful, they need to be well populated. FAIR projects developing repositories have had to develop strategies for populating them. Advocacy is important, to explain what repositories are and why authors should deposit their e-prints or other applicable content. But it is also important to make it easy for authors to deposit. Systems need to be easy to use to minimise any barriers. In the short term, practical measures may also be needed to ‘make it easy’. DAEDALUS and TARDis are both using mediated archiving for e-prints, where academics are assisted by staff to archive their e-prints. This will not necessarily be sustainable in the long term, but making it easy can get academics accustomed to something new.

Advocacy and cultural issues

Sharing digital assets involves cultural change. At a personal level it involves influencing people’s attitudes, how they behave and their working practices. At an institutional level, it involves influencing policies, practice and decisions. Advocacy is about ‘selling’ the key concepts to stakeholders so this leads to cultural change. FAIR projects have gained considerable experience in advocacy and developed a range of materials that can be used by others to ‘sell’ repositories and develop a culture of sharing.

Planning Advocacy

The Electronic Theses project developed a useful approach for planning advocacy. They used it at The Robert Gordon University to plan advocacy for their repository of ETDs, but the same approach could be used by any institution developing a repository or indeed seeking to stimulate cultural change. They first identified the key stakeholders that needed to buy into the new approach for handling theses – in their case students, academic staff, administrators and librarians. They then developed a list of key messages for each stakeholder group. Finally, they planned advocacy materials and events to get the messages across. It is a simple and straightforward approach to planning that worked.

Selling a Repository to Users

It is obviously important to have user guides to explain what a repository is and how to deposit documents. But most FAIR projects have found that advocacy is needed to really ‘sell’ the concept of a repository. Users need to know why it is important and what benefits they will get. Most FAIR projects have worked closely with academic departments, and many have held workshops and other events. This has been an opportunity to explain the reasons for submitting content to the repository and the benefits this can bring. For example, DAEDALUS held a seminar for staff in 2003 to explain e-print repositories and open access (Institutional repositories: a way forward for research), and a launch event to explain the new Glasgow ePrints Service in 2004. The time and effort that projects have put into advocacy activities has paid off and helped to populate their repositories. But most have found that it takes time to change attitudes and behaviour, and it often takes longer than at first thought.

The FAIR Programme led many UK universities to launch institutional repositories for the first time, and contributed to an emerging advocacy programme – spanning government, research funders, institutional leaders as well as authors – that now sees the UK among world leaders in terms of the number of open access IRs [Institutional Repositories].
Steve Hitchcock, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton

Getting Institutional Buy-in

Getting a buy-in from users is important, but in the long term institutional buy-in is even more important. Most FAIR projects have developed pilot repositories to explore the practical issues in setting up a repository and demonstrate the benefits. The institution needs to understand the benefits and make a commitment to continue to support the repository. FAIR projects have found that many factors are involved in getting institutional buy-in, eg working with stakeholders, ensuring there is a good fit with institutional objectives and information strategy, and really demonstrating the value.

Making a good business case involves thought. SHERPA has posted their business case on their website, and this is a useful model for e-prints. TARDis has focused on the benefits of using their e-print repository as a publications database. The repository not only makes the publications more visible to the community, but the information about publications can be extracted for CVs, grant proposals and for the Research Assessment Exercise. Electronic Theses has posted their business case on their website, and this is a useful model for ETDs.

Scholarly Communication

Traditionally academics have given their research articles to publishers and the publishers have sold the articles back to institutions as expensive journals. Librarians and many academics are now arguing in favour of open access solutions, either via repositories or open access journals. Many of the FAIR projects have taken a leading role in promoting awareness of issues related to scholarly communications and the development of repositories as an open access solution. In return, the increasing pace of the open access movement has had a positive effect on the FAIR projects within their institutions. For example, a major outcome of the SHERPA project has been the evidence they presented to the UK Government Science & Technology Select Committee on Scientific Publications. SHERPA was heavily quoted within the Committee’s report. The DAEDALUS project organised a seminar on scholarly communication in 2002 and has been active in the debate since then. They have also developed a ‘Create Change’ website to explain the issues and inform academics about action they can take.

Sharing Resources

The FAIR Enough project explored issues related to embedding JISC Collections and Services within a consortium of FE colleges. An important aspect of the project was to encourage effective collaboration and sharing of finished learning resources. Curriculum Collaboration Events were held to investigate attitudes to producing materials in cooperation with others and to sharing the results. By providing each participant with the opportunity to create a learning object specific to their needs and to subsequently benefit from those created by others, the team was able to highlight the advantages of collaboration and of using existing resources. These events also provided the project team with a forum to showcase some of the online resources available to participants. FAIR Enough has demonstrated the value of collaboration and sharing in FE and, during the timeframe of the project, the sharing of e-learning resources has become part of the national agenda.

Exposing Assets

Many collections already exist in repositories within institutions. It is important when seeking to enhance these and expose the content more widely that both the content owners and the users of the collections feel comfortable with what is being presented. The Harvesting the Fitzwilliam project has gained experience in the effect that exposing an existing museum collection can have, and will be looking to apply this in further work. Much of the information within e-prints and ETDs already exists, and it is the novelty of making it available through the repository that requires explanation. The ownership of the content is a particular issue, especially for images and author-generated material such as e-prints and learning materials.

Legal Issues

IPR issues can be a barrier to the sharing of digital assets. There is IPR associated with the assets an institution might like to share, whether e-prints, ETDs, images, or learning materials. An institution needs the IPR owner’s permission to deposit the asset in a repository and to share it within the institution or with the wider community. Licence agreements are needed to document the IPR rights the author grants to the institution and the institution grants to users. IPR is an important and sometimes difficult issue that all FAIR projects have had to address.

Protecting Author Rights

Early in the FAIR Programme, the RoMEO project provided valuable insights into the IPR issues of sharing resources in an open access environment. RoMEO conducted surveys to assess the needs of relevant stakeholders (academic authors, journal publishers, and OAI data and service providers), so these could be reflected in rights solutions. The academic author survey explored how academics wanted to protect their own e-prints and to use those of other academics. They found that most academics were happy for their e-prints to be made freely available to others. However, this was on the condition that the author(s) should always be attributed as such, all copies should be exact replicas of the original work, and they should be used for non-commercial purposes only. RoMEO then developed a rights solution – simple rights metadata by which authors could describe the rights status of their e-prints and by which OAI data and service providers could assert the rights status of their metadata. This can be achieved using Creative Commons licences.

Publisher Policies on e-Prints

Publishing practices are one of the greatest barriers to populating institutional repositories with e-prints. Academic authors can’t archive their journal articles in repositories if they have already signed legal agreements with publishers which prevent this. Similarly, publisher policies on self-archiving can influence an author’s choice of publisher. RoMEO analysed 80 journal publishers’ copyright transfer agreements and found that about 50% allowed authors to self-archive (though conditions varied) and about 30% didn’t allow authors the right to do anything with their article. There was so much interest in the results that RoMEO created a publisher policy directory so authors could check policies before choosing a publisher. The RoMEO directory is now available as an expanded and searchable database hosted by SHERPA.

Resources such as the RoMEO directory of publisher copyright policies allow authors to check policies before they publish and encourage them to select publishers that allow archiving. Similarly, FAIR projects have lobbied publishers to change their practices. SHERPA in particular has lobbied publishers collectively and individually with some success. During the FAIR Programme, two of the largest publishers, Elsevier and Springer, changed their policies and now permit authors to archive the ‘author final version’ of their paper in an institutional repository.

Awareness of Copyright and IPR

The FAIR projects developing repositories for e-prints and ETDs have found that many academics and students in HE have limited understanding of copyright and IPR. Advocacy has been an important aspect of these projects to brief authors about copyright before they deposit their work. FAIR Enough has also found that IPR and copyright issues pose a significant challenge to the effective use of electronic resources across the FE community. The project has also gone some way to proving that the needs of the FE community are quite different to those of HE with regards to IPR and copyright. This stems in part from the institutional differences in resource structures and general attitudes.

FAIR Enough explored copyright and IPR as barriers to embedding of JISC Collections within a consortium of FE colleges. In the first phase of the project, the team conducted a survey within the partner colleges to gauge attitudes and knowledge about copyright issues and to identify specific problems that were barriers. They then held staff development sessions to highlight some of the misconceptions and to show how and why it is possible to use resources appropriately. Finally, the project developed technical solutions to address specific IPR problems identified. There are implications for copyright when practitioners disaggregate learning objects and then reuse the parts to create new electronic materials. The project therefore designed a repository to house multimedia elements so that practitioners across the consortium could use them to build learning objects without having to consider their origin or the copyright status. The technical work is still in the early stages, but the project’s problem and solution approach, supported by staff development events, is one that other institutions could follow.

Licence Agreements

Licence agreements are important and have proved valuable as a means of ensuring that IPR is handled in a well-managed way and that everyone’s rights are respected. Several FAIR projects developed model licence agreements that institutions in the community can use and adapt to their own circumstances. The SHERPA project developed guidelines for e-print repositories that include a model licence. Theses Alive! wrote a report for the JISC Legal Service on the legal issues surrounding ETDs, and this includes a model licence. Readers may wish to visit the many repositories developed by FAIR projects to see how they have adapted model licences for their situation. Finally, the Hybrid Archives project has developed a licence for content providers to support their new preservation model for datasets.

Patient Consent for Medical Images

The BioMed Image Archive project aimed to produce a national repository for biomedical images to enable UK academics to share their images with the education community. However, the project encountered problems in the area of patient consent. Research indicated that existing guidelines on the use of online images were unclear, and this could lead to misunderstandings or even legal problems. The project consulted with similarly concerned image specialists and subsequently organised a conference on patient permission. Expert speakers considered patient permission from different perspectives, including legal, ethical, and data protection. The conference attracted 120 delegates provided much valuable background and did much to raise awareness of patient consent in the wider education and health communities.

The FAIR Programme provided a kick-start to institutional repository development in the UK.
Stephen Pinfield, Director, Research and Learning Resources, Information Services, University of Nottingham

Technical Issues

Software

When developing an institutional repository, one of the most important considerations is what software to choose. There are many open source software packages that can be used to create repositories, and the Open Society Institute (OSI) Guide to Institutional Repository Software is a useful guide to what is available. Making a decision can be complex and involves careful thought about factors such as what the repository will contain, how it will be used, the features you want, and the local technical environment.

Several FAIR projects have written reports about their experience of selecting software and comparing different packages. The processes they followed and criteria they used will be of interest to institutions making similar decisions. Most of the projects developing e-print repositories chose GNU EPrints software from University of Southampton. This software was designed specifically for e-prints and is the most widely used worldwide. The projects developing repositories for ETDs chose DSpace software from MIT. DAEDALUS decided to build two separate repositories for different types of content – they used EPrints for post-prints and DSpace for pre-prints, theses and grey literature.

Tools

It is also important to select software with the right features, and the OSI Guide has a useful table comparing features of many open source packages that are available. However, even the ‘best’ software may not have every feature an institution wants. Several FAIR projects developed add-ons to enhance the basic functionality of off-the-shelf repository software. These tools are also open source and available to the community. Examples include:

• Theses – Theses Alive! developed the Theses Alive Plug-in for Institutional Repositories (TAPIR), a DSpace add-on for the submission of ETDs
• Research Assessment Exercise – TARDis developed a RAE Management interface for EPrints which will allow them to easily extract the relevant data for the RAE from their repository
• Importing data – the DAEDALUS project has developed scripts for importing bibliographic data in Reference Manager format into EPrints. This includes filtering so that only journal references are imported

Metadata

Metadata is ‘data about data’ – information about the resources in a repository to aid in finding and managing them. The OAI-PMH standard was developed with e-prints in mind and requires the minimum use of unqualified Dublin Core metadata to describe their bibliographic elements. This ‘descriptive metadata’ is used to index the e-prints and enable searching and discovery. It is harvested by OAI service providers that provide search services across more than one subject or institutional repository. There are other types of metadata as well. For example, rights metadata contains information about the IPR and allows repositories to manage access and use in accordance with these rights.

Metadata issues are fundamental to the design and use of repositories and all FAIR projects have wrestled with how to use the Dublin Core standard effectively for their repositories. Dublin Core is simple and flexible, but it was not developed with repositories in mind. It needs to be used in a consistent way to enable searching and browsing within and across repositories. ePrints UK developed a useful guide to using Dublin Core for e-prints, so that the metadata they harvested would be consistent.

Another problem with Dublin Core is that it may not include all the elements that are needed to describe the particular content in a repository. Theses Alive! collaborated with the other FAIR projects developing repositories for ETDs to develop a UK Metadata Core Set for ETDs, which is becoming a standard. This contains new elements for ETDs and defines how the generic elements should be used in the context of ETDs. The Accessing the Virtual Museum project encountered difficulties when indexing Egyptian artefacts and developed a specialist subject thesaurus to enhance the records for discovery. Harvesting the Fitzwilliam found that indexing needed to be appropriate to the service provider to best serve the intended audience. Each of these problems has been addressed in their own way and OAI subsequently used successfully.

Preservation

The preservation of digital assets is an important area, and JISC is doing much work in this area. The FAIR Programme presented an opportunity to think through preservation issues for the new area of institutional repositories while development was at an early stage. The SHERPA project has worked with the Arts and Humanities Data Service to explore the preservation of e-prints, including the pros and cons, options, and standards. There is a very useful page of advice about preservation issues on the SHERPA website with links to several studies.

The Arts and Humanities Data Service has also examined the preservation of datasets through the Hybrid Archives project. Traditionally, content providers deposit their datasets with services such as AHDS, which then preserve them and make them available to the community. Hybrid Archives has developed a new ‘hybrid’ model for the preservation of datasets. The model allows for data to be deposited at the Arts and Humanities Data Service through harvesting via OAI-PMH, but for the content also to be held by the data owner who then provides access to it. It therefore provides a bridge between the complexity (and burdens) of full ‘traditional’ deposit of institutional collections and the more simplified approach embodied in harvesting methodology.

The new model is described on the Hybrid Archives website along with a specification for metadata requirements and a licence agreement for content providers. The Hybrid Archives model has been welcomed by the research community, and AHDS is looking to offer it as a regular service.

Looking ahead

With the FAIR Programme complete, how are the issues raised by the Programme being taken forward?

Reaping the benefits

Although FAIR has sometimes been regarded as the e-prints and repositories programme within JISC, benefits have been evident across all the themes of the programme.
The museum projects have developed processes to make hidden collections accessible through sharing them; the PORTAL and FAIR Enough projects have provided a body of evidence to support the presentation of shared resources within institutional portals and VLEs, respectively; and the ability to share resources has offered a valuable route towards their preservation.
Those projects addressing the management of e-prints have engaged and informed the continuing debate on open access, centring on the use of institutional repositories to record research and other institutional resources and outputs. The three projects investigating electronic theses have built a framework to support the management of electronic theses within UK institutions. These projects in total have built a body of knowledge on the development of institutional repositories that can support others choosing to pursue this direction.

Follow-on activity

JISC has sought to build on the electronic theses framework through the EThOS project, which will deliver a fully operational, easily scaleable and financially viable prototype UK ETD online service. A key part of this project will be investigations of the repositories that can be used to store the theses. The FAIR Programme highlighted the importance of these stores. EThOS is part of a wider Digital Repositories Programme that is further investigating them. This Programme will examine how repositories can be best utilised, examining user requirements to ensure that their implementation truly reflects the right needs.

FAIR activity in the field of institutional repositories is being extended within this programme. The SHERPA Plus project will provide a proactive national information point on institutional repositories. SHERPA is also involved in an international initiative with the University of Lund in Sweden to create the Directory of Open Access Repositories. The work of FAIR has also led to the University of Southampton formally supporting the use of its institutional repository as a store for institutional research outputs.

The vision of the OAI was one of the inspirations for the FAIR Programme, the vision of using a lightweight technical solution to enable the effective sharing of resources. Making data available for sharing using OAI-PMH has proved to be a highly workable solution. JISC is contributing further to the practical implementation of this technology through the IRS project at the University of Southampton within the Digital Repositories Programme. This project will be building an interoperable usage statistics service for OAI-compliant repositories, allowing the sharing of resources to be tracked.

The work of the RoMEO project and subsequent international OAI-Rights initiative has provided a method by which IPR can be associated with any resource being shared using OAI-PMH. When sharing information, the ownership of intellectual property and copyright is a vital factor and the OAI-Rights initiative provides an enabling framework to support this. Many of the FAIR projects addressed the issue of IPR, with varying degrees of success. The Theses Alive! project produced a leaflet on IPR in electronic theses; the BioMed Image Archive tackled the issue of IPR and medical images; the FAIR Enough project clarified ground rules for what can and cannot be shared within FE. The open access debate is, at one level, a debate about copyright, one that RoMEO started to address. JISC and its equivalent in The Netherlands, the SURF Foundation, have followed this through with continuing activity in this area and its impact on the effective storage and sharing of e-prints in particular.

I see the development of ROSE [the University of Bristol’s institutional repository] as a very strategic and important step ahead for both the University and the research community!
Joe McGeehan, Professor of Communications Engineering, Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol

Addressing copyright is, of course, one aspect of the cultural change that using a repository and sharing resources brings about. Many of the Digital Repository Programme projects will be considering this head-on, assessing user requirements prior to and alongside technical development. There is no doubt that technological change causes concern amongst some users, and it is important to deal with this as a key element in any strategy to increase the sharing of resources. The JISC’s Scholarly Communications Group is playing a major role here, commissioning appropriate studies to gather information on trends in this field: a major survey of academic authors on their views of open access self-archiving was released in June 2005.

Finally, though possibly most importantly, a number of the FAIR projects are making use of their repository developments to contribute towards JISC’s ongoing work on digital preservation. The Hybrid Archives project highlighted the value of OAI-PMH and repositories to preservation for a national service, and there are further steps underway to complement this with institutional models promoting digital preservation closer to home. JISC’s programme on Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions is considering preservation issues for digital repositories. Within this, the work that SHERPA initiated on preservation during FAIR is being continued in the SHERPA Digital Preservation project, and the University of Southampton (TARDis) and the British Library are building a pilot OAI-based preservation service (PRESERV).

Pointers to the future

Many of the FAIR project outputs provide pointers to where developments seem set to move forward in the future. To take some examples: 

• The work of the DAEDALUS project in reusing resources within the institutional repository at the University of Glasgow to support new publishing models and online collections
• The work of the SHERPA and Hybrid Archives projects in investigating how digital resources might be effectively shared to enable their long-term preservation 
• The work of the ePrints UK and Harvesting the Fitzwilliam projects in providing a baseline for building services facilitating access to the resources being shared 
• The work of the three electronic theses projects in establishing a framework within which UK theses and dissertations can be more effectively shared and accessed

These and the rest of the projects have taken big steps in increasing our knowledge of the topics covered within the Programme and the sharing of resources in general.

Summary

How to sum up the FAIR Programme? In essence, the Focus on Access to Institutional Resources Programme has lived up to its name. It has focused on institutional resources and how others can effectively access them. It has provided a wealth of experience on the set-up and use of repositories; on the amalgamation of resources to store in those repositories through advocacy efforts; and on the technologies that are required and can be used to then make those resources available to others. As many questions have emerged as have been answered, though it is through the work of FAIR that it has been possible to know which questions these should be.

Follow-on activity from the FAIR projects has been widespread, and the benefits arguably even wider. Both JISC and other organisations have picked up on the FAIR Programme’s outputs and are seeking to build on its work. This has no doubt been fuelled in part by concurrent developments in the open access movement. But it has also reflected the increasing recognition that universities and colleges produce and make use of a vast array of digital resources, and that these need careful management if they are to be effectively stored, used, shared and preserved.

In summary, institutions and others looking to carry out activity in the following areas will find benefit from the work within FAIR:

• Setting up a repository
• Addressing the cultural change of this new technology
• Addressing the IPR implications of sharing resources
• Managing e-prints and electronic theses
• Virtual sharing of museum collections
• Presenting shared resources in institutional environments
• Preserving institutionally-generated resources

Many of the initiatives taking place alongside FAIR in both the UK and abroad, as indicated in the ‘Landscape’ section, are ongoing beyond the lifetime of FAIR. These are themselves benefiting from the work of the FAIR projects and will act as further reference points for institutions seeking to follow up the issues involved.
The Open Archives Initiative itself continues to mature and offer a range of ways to share resources simply.

Where next?

The level of activity inspired by the FAIR Programme clearly reflects the importance of the issues it raised and investigated. The work of the FAIR Programme has not stopped with the projects and many further benefits will accrue from subsequent and ongoing work. Quite where institutional repositories, or the open access debate, or the presentation and preservation of shared resources, or access to museum collections will be in years to come is still to be discovered. The FAIR Programme has given impetus to investigations in these areas and a clear starting point.

The FAIR projects

Accessing the Virtual Museum
The Accessing the Virtual Museum project catalogued and imaged objects from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London so they could be shared with wider audiences using the OAI protocol. The major issue addressed was the creation of metadata for 5,000 museum objects that required transliteration from original Coptic and Islamic scripts and which do not naturally fit within Dublin Core for use with the OAI protocol. Subject classification was also examined and the use of collection descriptions investigated. The project also carried out experiments in virtual handling of museum objects, enabling users at remote locations to see objects handled or rotated on a turntable at the museum in real time.
www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk/randd/avm.html

BioMed Image Archive
The BioMed Image Archive itself is an established source of biomedical images, which has been available for a number of years. This project developed software to allow institutions and individuals to submit images to the archive remotely so they could be shared with the wider community. The Archive has also explored the use of the OAI protocol to facilitate disclosure of image metadata. A major issue that has affected the project has been the legal and ethical considerations of how medical images are collected and disclosed, and these have been explored in depth.
www.brisbio.ac.uk/research.html

DAEDALUS – Data-providers for Academic E-content and the Disclosure of Assets for Learning, Understanding and Scholarship
DAEDALUS investigated the use of different repository software to store different types of resources within the university, from which they could then be disclosed to the wider community using the OAI protocol. These resources included pre-prints, post-prints (deliberately kept separate), ETDs, administrative documents, and grey literature. The project built expertise in the use of different repository software and demonstrated how a wide range of materials can be stored and disclosed for internal and external use. The project was split evenly between technical and advocacy activities, the latter proving essential to pave the way for the technical development to succeed.
www.lib.gla.ac.uk/daedalus/

Electronic Theses
The Electronic Theses project examined methods for the production, management and use of ETDs, including existing theses that have been digitised and those born digital. This complements the work of other FAIR projects on ETDs – DAEDALUS (storage and access) and Theses Alive! (technical aspects of submission and management). The project developed a UK Metadata Core Set for ETDs in collaboration with the other projects on ETDs and the British Library. It has also developed models and guidance for handling ETDs and shared them with the community.
www.rgu.ac.uk/library_edocs/e-theses.htm

ePrints UK
As the number of repositories grows, ‘service providers’ will be needed to harvest their metadata and enable searching across individual repositories. ePrints UK, a Resource Discovery Network (RDN) project, has explored the issues involved in developing a national ‘service provider’ with the aim of being able to search across any OAI-compliant e-print repository. The project established a pilot service harvesting metadata daily from around 30 available institutional and subject-based e-print repositories, mainly in the UK, and making the central database available for searching on the RDN server. It has also investigated the use of web services to enhance the metadata for searching.
www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/

FAIR Enough
The Western Colleges Consortium (WCC) is a collection of four FE colleges in the West Country. The overall aim of the FAIR Enough project was to conduct a series of experiments looking at technical and presentation issues surrounding the embedding of JISC Collections and Services into a variety of VLE and intranet delivery systems (portals) used by the colleges within the consortium. These experiments were designed to see how well JISC Collections and Services could be presented in tandem with existing assets and services held by the colleges. During the life of the project an investigation was undertaken on the related issues of institutional asset disclosure with an emphasis on IPR, cultural and educational challenges. FAIR Enough project

HaIRST – Harvesting Institutional Resources in Scotland Testbed
The HaIRST project involved a consortium of both HE and FE institutions, and investigated the ways in which different types of materials can be disclosed and shared. For HE institutions the primary material is e-prints, whereas for FE institutions learning materials are the main body of content. The project has developed a model of how different levels of metadata can be incorporated in an overall search for materials across the range when they are disclosed using the OAI protocol.
hairst.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/

Harvesting the Fitzwilliam
This project prepared and digitised a range of objects and coins from the Fitzwilliam Museum collections for disclosure using the OAI protocol, and delivery of this metadata has been tested through the Archaeology Data Service and Arts & Humanities Data Service. Issues addressed have included the metadata requirements for museum objects and the disclosure of images using OAI. The work has been carried out in close conjunction with Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA)-funded OAI-based projects and experience has been shared across these initiatives.
www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/htf/

Hybrid Archives
The Hybrid Archives project examined the processes required to deposit institutional collections for preservation at a service such as the Arts & Humanities Data Service (AHDS), while allowing the data owner to retain the content and provide local access to it. It has developed a model of partial deposit which allows for a preservation copy of the content to be deposited at the AHDS using the OAI protocol. Users, however, are still guided to the original collections hosted by the data owners. The model is supported by metadata requirements, preservation requirements, a draft licence, and implementation plan.
www.ahds.ac.uk/about/projects/hybrid-archives/

PORTAL – Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally
The PORTAL project examined how JISC Collections and Services might be embedded within an institutional portal alongside local resources. The major activity in assessing this has been the establishment of user requirements for such a portal and the types of resources they would like to be able to access via this route. The results are particularly significant as the project surveyed requirements across UK educational institutions, building a national picture, and will therefore be valuable to any institution implementing a portal.
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/

RoMEO – Rights MEtadata for Open archiving
The RoMEO project provided valuable insights into the IPR issues of sharing resources using the Open Archives Initiative, especially e-prints. Surveys of authors, journal publishers, OAI data providers and OAI service providers have built up a body of data on the rights these various parties are willing to allow and/or would like to see. A directory of publisher policies on self-archiving was created and has attracted much attention; this is now being maintained by the SHERPA team at University of Nottingham. Solutions to allow all e-prints to include an IPR statement in associated metadata were created and these are being developed further through cooperation with both the Creative Commons and an OAI-Rights Technical Committee for incorporation in the OAI specification itself.
www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/

SHERPA – Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access
This project focused on building a substantial body of e-prints to increase the range of UK research output available on open access via the Open Archives Initiative. This includes both pre-prints and post-prints. The University of Nottingham is working with six other development partners and 12 other partner institutions across the UK to implement 20 e-print repositories and develop guidance on their take-up and use by authors. The preservation of e-prints is also being investigated. SHERPA is being run in association with the Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL).
www.sherpa.ac.uk/

TARDis – Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and Disclosure
The TARDis project has investigated the technical and cultural aspects of setting up an institutional repository and making this an integral part of the research infrastructure of the University of Southampton. Their repository is a publications database that makes the research output visible and accessible to the community. It also acts as a central record of the institution’s research that can be used for many purposes, eg funding proposals, CVs, and the Research Assessment Exercise. The work of the project has culminated in an announcement by the university to provide core funding to support use of the institutional repository across the university and make all the university’s research freely available. 
tardis.eprints.org/

Theses Alive!
The Theses Alive! project developed a pilot system for the submission and management of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). This involved the development of a new tool to support the submission of ETDs (TAPIR) which is now freely available on an open source licence. Other important issues explored by the project include the legal issues associated with ETDs and implications for changing the university’s rules and regulations to accommodate electronic submission of ETDs. The management of ETDs at the University of Edinburgh has sat alongside the development of an overall Edinburgh Research Archive covering ETDs, e-prints and other research outputs. This experience was fed back into the project as it progressed.
www.thesesalive.ac.uk/

Glossary

ADS – Archaeology Data Service – The ADS supports research, learning, and teaching in the area of archaeology with high quality and dependable digital resources. The ADS is based at the University of York and hosts AHDS Archaeology.
ads.ahds.ac.uk/Creative Commons – A non-profit organisation founded on the notion that some authors may not want to exercise all of the intellectual property rights the law affords them. Creative Commons has developed a set of free public licences to enable authors to share their work with others.
www.creativecommons.org/

CURL – Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles.
www.curl.ac.uk/

DSpace software – Repository software developed jointly by MIT and Hewlett-Packard that is available under an open source BSD licence and is widely used.
www.dspace.org/

Dublin Core - This is a core set of 15 descriptive metadata elements that can be used to define the properties of objects, for example title, subject, creator, date. They are primarily used to enable searching and indexing of the objects in Web-based resource discovery systems.
www.dublincore.org/

e-Prints – A generic term for electronic versions of research papers or other similar output. These can include journal articles before peer review (pre-prints), the final published version publication (post-prints), conference papers, etc.

ETDs – Electronic theses and dissertations

GNU EPrints software – Repository software developed by the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton that is available under a GNU GPL open source licence and widely used. 
software.eprints.org/

NDLTD - Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. The NDLTD is an international organisation dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination and preservation of electronic analogues to the traditional paper-based theses and dissertations.
www.ndltd.org/

OAI – Open Archives Initiative – An initiative to develop and promote interoperability standards to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.
www.openarchives.org/

This document and the FAIR Synthesis website have been written by Chris Awre, University of Hull and Christine Baldwin, Information Design & Management

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