This is a secondary publication and another way of making our own outputs available to the professional public. A suitable repository should be chosen for storage.
The repositories contain electronic preprints, postprints or publisher’s versions of journal articles, theses and dissertations, research reports, conference proceedings, book chapters, study and teaching materials, data files, etc.
Repositories usually provide the full text of documents, or basic information about the documents is available, and access to the full text is restricted to users at the institution.
Repositories are widespread, with thousands of them worldwide, and often provide access to unique content. Repositories and their content can be accessed through several worldwide repository registry projects, through which it is possible to search for articles and full texts that would otherwise not be easily searchable through conventional search engines (Google). The best known repositories are OpenDOAR, ROAR, OpenAIRE, BASE. The most recent project is the search portal for Open Access publications (repositories and journals) CORE.
How to find a suitable repository?
- The best place to deposit a document is in the institutional repository of your institution, i.e. in the CTU Digital Library. The CTU DL is linked to the most important international repositories. By depositing a document in the CTU DL, you will meet the open access conditions of some programmes.
- If your professional community publishes in a disciplinary repository, it is advisable to upload your publications to that repository as well, to support the dissemination of your outputs in your professional community.
- Some research funders (including the EU) require that the results of research they support are made publicly available (e.g. in a repository with a time embargo). An overview of research funders for which publication of results in an open repository is a condition for funding is provided by SHERPA Juliet.
- A useful source of information on the possibility/obligation to provide open access may be the ROARmap registry. It provides summary information on the internal policies of individual institutions and grant agencies and their relationship to OA publishing (requirements for providing open access to publications, conditions for uploading articles to the repository, etc.).
Types of repositories
Institutional repositories
- CTU Digital Library
- Almost every academic institution has its own repository
- A digital collection of outputs produced at a university or research institution, often maintained by the institution’s libraries. Members of a given community can upload the outputs of their academic and scholarly activities to the repository.
Disciplinary repositories
- Are not limited to the output of a single institution, but offer scientists and academics from a particular scientific discipline or group of related disciplines the opportunity to publish their work.
- An example is the preprint repository in physics, mathematics, computer science, biology, etc. arXiv.org.
Funders’ repositories
- Orphan repositories – not linked to any institution
- Multidisciplinary repositories – E.g. Zenodo
Grantor Aggregators
- E.g. OpenAIRE
Thesis search repositories
Final theses (bachelor’s, master’s, dissertation) are not usually published, but may contain interesting and unique information. They are often kept as internal university materials and are accessible in electronic form through the institutional repositories of the universities concerned.
In addition, there are projects that provide central search and access only and specifically to theses.
- NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations) – a search engine for theses from universities around the world.
- DART – Europe E-theses portal – Central search and access to theses and dissertations from European universities.
- Proquest Dissertations and Theses Global (PQDT) – ProQuest’s commercial database, providing access to full-text theses and dissertations from around the world.