Repository sustainability

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

General Track, "Repository Rants" 24x7 Presentations

The session was recorded and is <a href="https://connectpro.helsinki.fi/p9gn9h0dn49/">available for watching</a> (this presentation starts at 1:04:45).

There are too many projects that consume much money only to be abandoned once funds have dried up. Very few projects are built with a long-run future in mind. I want to show how this is badly and well done and with two examples with very similar goals. Nereus was a project by a consortium of European libraries to index the works of top economists. It got considerable funding from the EC and member institutions. It died after four years of online presence due to lack of funds. RePEc is a project started in 1997 and still going strong that has received no more than $100000 in its lifetime and has run for most of its history with no budget at all. Note that over 90% of what Nereus was holding was in fact coming from RePEc. What is the difference? 1) Academics have a stake in RePEc, while Nereus was run by librarians with little input from economists. 2) Economists know how to put incentives right, librarians do not. 3) RePEc was conceived to run with no funds, while Nereus spent a lot of money on discussions and internal negotiations, but nothing on a long term vision.