38 participants from 17 countries (Belarus, Botswana, Croatia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Namibia, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, the UK and Zimbabwe) attended EIFL's webinar on embedding repositories.

Participants talked about embedding repositories into institutional processes, systems and culture to improve access to the institution’s research outputs and links between research output and overall expertise and personal skills.

William Nixon of Enlighten – the University of Glasgow’s institutional repository, presented a good practice approach of using a repository as a research publications database. Embedding a repository implies that it is no longer a separate data silo, cut off from the mainstream of the institution’s overall research management processes. 

In this embedding scenario, the repository also becomes the central publications database, holding both metadata records and full text/other outputs. It is linked with other elements of the research management infrastructure – project and funding data, staff and research student identity information, etc.

Pablo de Castro, a euroCRIS Board member, explored why and how the interoperability of institutional repositories and Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) should be implemented in order to provide rich contextual information (project, funding, people & organisations) to the otherwise frequently detached information on institutional outputs (including publications and data).

Download William's and Pablo's slides here.

The webinar recording is available here.

Useful links

• RSP’s practical guide to embedding research repositories into institutional processes, systems and culture
• The COAR Repository Observatory Third Edition on IR and CRIS: "7 things you should know about…Institutional Repositories, CRIS Systems, and their Interoperability"