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, and more: CERES
- Master’s Theses: Master’s Theses Archive (for the Cranfield site) and Shrivenham Repository
- Research data: CORD
Photo by Tobias Fischer on Unsplash
Categories & Tags:
Leave a comment on this post:
You might also like…
Life as a MSc Automotive Engineering Student at Cranfield University
I chose Cranfield University, because of its immense industrial connections and the depth of the modules. Before accepting the offer, I had a chat with a few alumni about their life here, both academically ...
My Experience as a C4D Scholar
How the C4D Scholarship made it possible for me to study MDes Design Thinking at one of the most prestigious universities in the world; Cranfield! I first found my interest in Design while in ...
Marketing sustainability claims: How to avoid greenwashing
As businesses strive to market themselves to best appeal to today’s sustainability-conscious consumers, it is perhaps inevitable that claims will be made that don’t necessarily give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the ...
Representing Cranfield at the edie Sustainable Leaders Conference
I'm Caroline Harris, and I work for the Sustainable Business Group and the Bettany Centre of Entrepreneurship. As the Event Coordinator for both teams, I focus on creating and increasing engagement and outreach both internally ...
The importance of words in neurodiversity
The words we use in studying neurodiversity are important. It's easy to get caught up in the conversation about words. This is often generated by not wanting to cause offense or being in search of ...
The Sustainability of a Solutionist Mindset
'Have a solutionist mindset' These words were spoken by Ms Solitaire Townsend, the founder of Futerra, who kicked off the Edie 23 conference Consisting of 130+ speakers and 700+ delegates. To achieve the goals of ...