Institutional repository

An institutional repository (IR) is an online archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution.

An institutional repository can be viewed as a "...a set of services that a university offers to members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members." For a university, this includes materials such as monographs, eprints of academic journal articles—both before (preprints) and after (postprints) undergoing peer review—as well as electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).

An institutional repository might also include other digital assets generated by academics, such as datasets, administrative documents, course notes, learning objects, or conference proceedings. Deposit of material in an institutional repository is sometimes mandated by that institution.

An institutional repository is a means to ensure that the published work of scholars is available to the academic community even after increases in subscription fees or budget cuts within libraries (Bhardwaj, 2014 & Boufarss 2011). The majority of research scholars do not provide free access to their research output to their colleagues in an organization (Ahmed and Al-Baridi 2012). IRs provide scholars with a common platform so that everyone in the institution can contribute scholarly material to promote cross-campus interdisciplinary research. An institutional repository is an online archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. The development of an IR redefines the production and dissemination of scholarly material within an academic community. The objective of such a repository is to support the organization’s goals. Some institutions use an IR as a positive marketing tool to enhance their reputation. The contents available on the institute’s website usually are removed after a few weeks. An IR can provide a platform to manage institutional information, including web contents. IRs have a number of benefits, including access to resources,visibility of research, and presentations of the contents (Nabe 2010). (Source:Bhardwaj, Raj Kumar. "Institutional Repository Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis." Science & Technology Libraries ahead-of-print (2014): 1-18)

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