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Introduction
A key role of both information professionals and publishers working in the academic sector is to improve the communication of scholarly research. Institutional repositories have come to represent an important part of the way in which scholarly research can be made more visible and accessible for many. As the first institutional repositories have now been in existence for over 10 years, it seems appropriate to assess the impact they have in enhancing the processes of sharing research. It is usual that any new initiative evolves in its purpose and direction in the early years, as it responds to audience and user dynamics. Therefore, this research sets out to uncover the central purposes of institutional repositories now, how developments are being affected by policies and researcher behaviour and also what services and approaches are appropriate in supporting repositories from those partners involved in scholarly communication.
Institutional repositories have been discussed extensively for over 10 years and there are clear general aims. The main drivers for institutional repositories have been from the information management and technology disciplines. This has led, intentionally or otherwise, to many institutional repositories being viewed, created and managed as institutional archives, serving a dual role of keeping all the research outputs from the institution online and in one place in perpetuity and as a means of showcasing the collective intellectual output of the university.
Early advocates of institutional repositories also pointed to new models of scholarly communication (Chan, 2004; Lynch, 2003; Rumsey, 2006). Crow (2002) clearly states that the development of institutional repositories has the potential to disrupt the current publishing models. Harnad has been one of the earliest advocates of repositories as a means of capturing research in digital formats and replacing current models of research communication (Harnad et al. , 2004). This led to the development of the ePrints repository software at Southampton University to manage journal articles, book chapters and conference papers in particular. Pinfield (2002) made a very direct case for repositories to replace traditional publishing models.
It is interesting to now evaluate what is emerging as the overall landscape of institutional repositories. The rate in growth in the numbers of repositories has been very impressive. Sherpa and OpenDOAR provide many useful definitions and statistics. As of 1...