INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY – NEED AND OBJECTIVES
An Institutional repository
is an online locus for collecting, preserving, and disseminating - in digital form -
the intellectual output of an institution,
particularly a research institution.[1][2][3][4]
For a university,
this would include materials such as research journal
articles, before (preprints) and after (postprints)
undergoing peer review, and digital versions of theses and dissertations,
but it might also include other digital assets
generated by normal academic life, such as administrative documents, course
notes, or learning objects.
The four main objectives for having
an institutional repository are:
- to provide open access to institutional research output by self-archiving it;
- to create global visibility for an institution's scholarly research;
- to collect content in a single location;
- to store and preserve other institutional digital assets, including unpublished or otherwise easily lost ("grey") literature (e.g., theses or technical reports).
Features and Benefits of an Institutional Repository
According to the Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) data [6]
and the Repository 66 map at December 2010,[7]
the majority of IRs are built using Open Source software.
While the most popular Open Source
and hosted applications share the advantages that IRs bring to institutions,
such as increased visibility and impact of research output, interoperability
and availability of technical support, IR advocates tend to favour Open Source
solutions for the reason that they are by their nature more compatible with the
ideology of the freedom and independence of the internet from commercial
interests. On the other hand, some institutions opt for outsourced commercial
solutions.
In her briefing paper[8]
on open access repositories, advocate Alma Swan lists the following as the
benefits that repositories bring to institutions:
- Opening up outputs of the institution to a worldwide audience;
- Maximizing the visibility and impact of these outputs as a result;
- Showcasing the institution to interested constituencies – prospective staff, prospective students and other stakeholders;
- Collecting and curating digital output;
- Managing and measuring research and teaching activities;
- Providing a workspace for work-in-progress, and for collaborative or large-scale projects;
- Enabling and encouraging interdisciplinary approaches to research;
- Facilitating the development and sharing of digital teaching materials and aids, and
- Supporting student endeavours, providing access to theses and dissertations and a location for the development of e-portfolios.
DIFFERENT LAYERS OF OSI MODEL:
The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model is a product of the Open Systems Interconnection effort at the International Organization for Standardization. It is a prescription of characterising and standardising the functions of a communications system in terms of abstraction layers. Similar communication functions are grouped into logical layers. A layer serves the layer above it and is served by the layer below it.
For example, a layer that provides error-free communications across a network provides the path needed by applications above it, while it calls the next lower layer to send and receive packets that make up the contents of that path. Two instances at one layer are connected by a horizontal connection on that layer.
