What are repositories and why are they useful?
02/09/2021
An open access repository is a digital repository where the content is freely available to download and reuse (sometimes with restrictions), where no login or subscription is required.
An institutional research repository is a digital repository for the storage of outputs from research undertaken at an organisation. They can be wholly open access repositories, closed access, or a mixture. Content that you might expect to find in an institutional research repository are: research papers, working papers, reports, datasets, and other digital objects resulting from research.
Collectively they store, preserve and provide access to a vast wealth of the world’s research output, and are free for us to use!
Examples of major repositories you might find useful:
CORE
The world’s largest collection of open access research papers.
DART
European e-theses portal giving access to theses from 320 universities from 19 European countries.
EThOS
The British Library’s Electronic Thesis Online Service.
OATD
Collection of 1.5 million open access theses and dissertations worldwide.
NDLTD
Theses and dissertations submitted to a number of universities in Africa, Australia, Europe, and North America.
Examples of subject-focused repositories:
arXiv
An open-access archive for scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.
bioRxiv
Biological and biochemical sciences
Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)
PubMed Central and Europe PMC – content in health and health-related sciences
To see an extensive list of open access repositories visit the global Directory of Open Access Repositories: OpenDOAR.
Don’t forget our own Cranfield repositories:
- PhD theses, staff papers, research data and more: CERES
- Master’s Theses: Master’s Theses Archive (for the Cranfield site) and Shrivenham Repository
Photo by Tobias Fischer on Unsplash
Categories & Tags:
Leave a comment on this post:
You might also like…
Earth’s silent hero: Why soil is finally stepping into the spotlight
As a Soil Scientist, the start of December is always an exciting time of year, specifically World Soil Day (5 December). This year, it’s doubly special, because we are also celebrating the 75th Anniversary ...
How do I reference social media… in the NLM style?
Although it’s not considered to be scholarly material, you may find information on social media useful for a piece of academic work. It may be that a particular post on X or Facebook illustrates or ...
Want to improve your reading skills?
Are you starting to read through the mountains of journals, books or articles for your project or on your course reading list? Let’s start with a few myths about the reading process: You need to ...
Introducing… Bloomberg Spreadsheet Analysis (BSA)
Want to take your Bloomberg data skills in Microsoft Excel to the next level? The new Bloomberg Spreadsheet Analysis (BSA) certification is designed to help you do just that. Created by Bloomberg, BSA is an ...
Bridging Science and Supply: My Journey at the GCSG European Knowledge Forum 2025
Earlier this year, I had the honour of being selected as one of the 2025 Global Clinical Supplies Group (GCSG) European Scholarship Winners, an opportunity that took me to Budapest, Hungary, for the GCSG ...
Engineering a Greener Tomorrow: The Future of Sustainable Manufacturing
Across the world, engineers are facing one of the greatest challenges of our time: how to manufacture more while consuming less. As industries race toward net-zero targets, sustainability has become the driving force behind ...