Towards a Plan S compliant repository: Building a safe and sustainable haven for scholarly content.

Since 2013, Tilburg University has been using the Elsevier application Pure as both a Current Research Information System (CRIS) and an Institutional Repository (IR). The use of Pure as an IR has been considered undesirable over time, because Pure lacks delete-recovery, versioning, and tombstone functionality, and therefore does not comply with Plan S.

Therefore in 2022 the decision was made to use a separate, open source IR as a safe haven for all CRIS content. Pure would continue to function as input for all data relating to publications and the full-texts would be forwarded to the IR via the build-in Pure connector. After an extensive market research and a tender procedure in 2024 TiU found a suitable IR application (DSpace) and an implementation and hosting partner (Atmire).

Over the years, several institutional repositories have integrated with Pure. More general, the idea of using a CRIS as the submission front end, and leverage the repository for preservation and dissemination is common.

However, the new challenges to comply with Plan S requirements, in combination with the capabilities and limitations in the DSpace 7-Pure connection, both presented here, give the audience an update on the state of the art in this area.