We can expect, within a fairly short time frame, that each research-based institution in Europe will have a repository and that the research outputs from each institution will be collected in and disseminated through the repository. Within the scope of this publication, a digital repository is being defined as

• 1. Containing research results,

• 2. Institutional and/or thematic, and

• 3. OAI-PMH compliant.

Institutional repositories contain scholarly publications (reports, working papers, preprints, post prints and published versions of articles and books) produced by universities or research institutions. Thematic repositories are usually organised around a specific discipline or research domain. All digital repositories, either institutional or thematic, comply with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), which enables their contents to be widely shared. Digital repositories contribute to the open access movement by providing platforms for researchers to make research results freely available on the web. They contribute to improving the visibility of research results, typically scientific articles, and are as such an important part of the digital repositories infrastructure vision for European research (DRIVER).

This DRIVER's Guide to Repositories aims to motivate and promote the creation, development and networking of digital repositories. The guide does not provide strict directions on how to construct a repository, or network of repositories. It contains comprehensive and current information on digital repository-related issues in the research community and is particularly relevant to repository managers, decision makers, funding agencies and infrastructure services as stakeholders. This guide not only supports the institutions that already participate in the current EU-funded DRIVER network, it also reaches out to institutions that are about to get started with repositories or aim to further extend their current services or impact.

DRIVER has identified five specific, complex and longer-term issues which are essential to either the establishment, development or sustainability of a digital repository:

• – the business of digital repositories

• – the population of repositories

• – intellectual property rights

• – data curation

• – long-term preservation

The success of a repository depends on having addressed these five issues sufficiently. Good practices and lessons learned as part of this report will assist stakeholders in both their day-to-day and long-term challenges, and can help them avoid reinventing the wheel. These issues will be addressed in five chapters, which all focus on inter- and transnational approaches.