Users are encouraged to share links of good examples of repositories, promote their own repositories and share best practices on IR engagement of users.
Although digital repositories (DR) have been with us for quite some time and it engender considerable media and conference attention, we seem to know very little about their use by academics. The huge survey carried out by David Nicholas and his colleagues sets out to address this by reporting on how well DR are used, what they are used for, what researchers' think of them, and where they thought they were going. I thought it worth reading the full article at: http://ciber-research.eu/download/20120620-Digital_repositories_ten_year...
Following the announcement of Google Scholar Metrix (http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html), a number of people are debating on the merits of the solution provided. In connection with this, I found the little piece by Tom Olijhoek on the use of open access to measure scientific output very interesting. I am not sure if this forum has dealt with this topic in any depth earlier and felt worth discussing and gathering expert opinion to explore more ways of promoting open access at regional, national and institutional level.
In the international arena the Open Access Movement has made significant strides with leading universities and research institutions committing to openly sharing its research output. Stellenbosch University has also joined this international cohort of open access advocates and has signed the Berlin Declaration confirming its commitment to openly sharing its research output. During the past year the University has made considerable progress in terms of opening access to information.
