Sharing some lessons learned from the RepositóriUM

Abstract

The global movement for Open Access that emerged in the beginning of this century was fundamental to expand the channels of dissemination of scientific production of higher educational institutions. The Institutional Repositories (IR) were one of those channels. The Universidade do Minho, Portugal was the first worldwide community of Portuguese language and one of the first in Europe to translate and implement an IR, the RepositóriUM, in 2003. This study aims to examine the initiatives developed during the implementation phase of RepositóriUM and discuss its possible application in other contexts. It also fits in a broader context associated with the implementation project of the institutional repository of the Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil. The methods used to meet the initial step of this study consisted of a documentary survey of normative and bibliographic documents of the RepositóriUM and their content analysis, and analysis of the data collected automatically by the support software. After six years of implementation of the RepositóriUM, the data presented are positive both in terms of growth in the number of archives and communities, and in consultations and downloads translating into an increase visibility for both the institution and for its researchers. From the analysis we also considered that some measures associated with the process of implementation of the RepositóriUM can be successfully adopted by other institutions.