Prospects for Institutional Repositories, 5 Years On

In 2003, I wrote an article arguing for the role of institutional (and disciplinary) repositories as essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age. At that time, actual deployment and operational experience with such repositories was quite limited. Since then, several different views of repositories have crystalized, and a great deal of experience has been gained. Some institutions have begun to mandate the use of repositories by faculty, and more recently funders have begun to introduce such mandates, though often involving disciplinary rather than institutional repositories. In this presentation and discussion I'll outline these different viewpoints about the role of repositories, review developments and experience and discuss what I believe are the prospects and critical barriers to progess for repositories.