SPARC’s membership and mandate encourages a focus on developing institutional repositories. Authors can choose to deposit their research articles in digital archives (either institutional or subject-based) which conform to the standards of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and enable readers to freely access and fully reuse the article text. Repositories allow any author to make their work available under Open Access conditions regardless of the journal out the article is published in. There are more than 2,000 open digital repositories available for authors to use around the world, and a comprehensive listing of is available through the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).
SPARC Resources on Digital Repositories
SPARC is committed to producing resources to promote the establishment, use, and improvement of open digital repositories:
- Open Doors and Open Minds: A SPARC / Science Commons White Paper on what faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution
- The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper
- SPARC Institutional Repository Checklist & Resource Guide
- Public response on behalf of SPARC, SPARC Europe and COAR regarding publishers self-deposit policies (April 2011)
