Practices and Patterns: the Convergence of Repository and CRIS Functions

The recently released report Practices and Patterns in Research Information Management: Findings from a Global Survey, jointly produced by OCLC Research and euroCRIS, shines a light onto a relevant area of repository evolution, namely the ever increasing coupling of its workflows to those traditionally associated with Research Information Management (RIM, or CRIS) systems. Previous landscape analysis had already identified this trend a few years ago, and this comprehensive OCLC/euroCRIS exercise provides new evidence on repositories and RIM systems acting like a single integrated, interoperable system for the purpose of collecting and exposing the institutional research output. The proposed presentation examines this trend based on nearly 400 survey responses from 40 nations, and provides insights into the increasing overlap of practice, functionality, and workflows, such as the extent to which RIM systems may be playing the role of institutional (literature) repositories, data repositories, and repositories for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). The global responses will be analysed together with their regional breakdown. Also relevant is the fact that the most popular protocol identified in the survey is OAI-PMH. Further iterations planned for this survey should help capturing the trends of the landscape evolution in this and other areas.