Benefits of a Repository

Research outputs repository

Learning and Teaching materials repository

Benefits for the global community (open):

Assists research collaboration through facilitating free exchange of scholarly information
Aids in the public understanding of research endeavours and activities

Benefits for the global community (open):

Supports re-use and re-purposing

Supports community input to metadata through tagging, notes, reviews

Supports development of effective retrieval through professionally created metadata

Ensures trust through appropriate licensing

Supports the sharing and re-use of individual assets

Supports the sharing and re-use of complex learning resources
Helps to develop critical mass of materials in particular subject areas

Cost efficiencies

Decrease in duplication

Provides access to non educational institutional bodies such as employers, professional bodies, trade unions, etc.

Benefits for the institution:
A repository can interoperate with other university systems and maximise efficiencies between them by sharing information
A repository can increase the visibility and prestige of institution (depending on content contained)
Repository content is readily searchable both locally and globally
Allows an institution to manage their intellectual property by raising awareness of copyright issues and facilitating the recording of relevant rights information
A repository that contains high quality content could be used as 'shop window' or marketing tool to entice staff, students and funding
Repositories can store other types of content that isn't necessarily published, sometimes known as 'grey literature'
A repository may be an important tool in managing an institution's research assessment or quality assessment submission

Repositories could provide cost savings in the long run provided that a significant amount of content is deposited in them
Offers greater flexibility over websites with better security and preservation of various kinds of digital materials through the collection of standardised metadata about each item

Benefits for the institution:
Maintaining and building on institutional reputations nationally & globally

Attracting new staff and students to institutions

Increased transparency and quality of learning materials

Supports sharing across/between departments within institutions and interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation

Shares expertise efficiently within institutions

Supports modular course development

Supports storage, management, preservation, attribution and retrieval of student content

Easily incorporated with institutionally-owned technologies

Supports the altruistic notion that sharing knowledge is in line with academic traditions and a good thing to do

Likely to encourage review of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

Supports preservation of learning resources.

Facilitates presentation of resources for accreditation bodies

Enhancing connections with external stakeholders by making resources visible

Benefits for the researcher:
Increased visibility of research output and consequently the department and the institution
Increased impact of publications. Research made freely available can be disseminated more widely and have greater impact. Work done on citation analysis has demonstrated that research that is made freely available will be easier to cite
Offers usage metrics so researchers can determine hit rates on specific papers
Creates the potential to undertake citation analysis through following links to papers held in other repositories
In fast moving subjects such as Electronics, researchers can make preprints (as opposed to peer reviewed papers) available via a repository, to establish that they were first and to get feedback
Helps researchers manage and store digital content connected with their research, including the underlying research data
Helps researchers manage any requirements of funding bodies for publications to be made available in a repository
Provides the possibility to standardise institutional records e.g. an academic's CV and published papers
Allows the creation of personalised publications lists

Benefits for those supporting teaching & learning:

Supports sharing of knowledge and teaching practice

Encourages improvement in teaching practice

Offers one-stop access point for staff

Encourages multidisciplinary collaboration and sharing

Supports CPD and offers evidence of this

Increased visability within the institution and possibly their subject discipline community

Reward and recognition from the wider community if made open

Benefits for learners:
Provides access to the latest research (especially useful at postgraduate level)

Benefits for learners:

Increased access options for students enrolled on courses (particularly remote students)

Increased access for non-traditional learners (widening participation)