Institutional Repositories

Institutional repositories are open access, electronic archives of manuscripts and articles written by the researchers at specific institutions. Unlike the traditional publishing model, these repositories allow researchers to retain their copyrights to their manuscripts. However, institutional repositories rely largely on voluntary contributions of papers at individual institutions. Many researchers elect not to deposit manuscripts in their institutional repositories for a variety of reasons, including that the policies of traditionally-published journals regarding local archiving vary.

Examples of institutional respositories include MIT"s Dspace or Berkeley's Digital Commons. DSpace and Digital Commons are popular hosting software that many universities are employing to set up their own digital repositories. Eprints, an open source hosting software, is also a popular tool for institutional repositories. BioMed Central has set up Open Repository, a fee-based hosting service, to make it easier to create local repositories. Other open-source software exists to create local repositories.

In November 2010, Himmelfarb Library launched a new institutional repository called Health Sciences Research Commons. The repository is intended to serve as a place for you to preserve and share your work with colleagues here at GWU, and with the scholarly community at large. The Health Sciences Research Commons runs on a Dspace platform, hosted by the Washington Regional Libraries Consortium (WRLC) called ALADIN Research Commons. Additional information is available about the Health Sciences Research Commons.