The Internet has, through immense growth and widespread adoption, brought about a revolutionary transformation in the way that people find, access and communicate information. As the digital transformation spreads, organisations across the developing world need to adapt the storage of their research information so that it is logically organised, relevant and continuously available.

To ensure that we preserve our valuable data for future generations, institutes and funders are increasingly mandating open access self-archiving. Self-archiving necessitates authors to store their research in a freely accessible repository at the time of submission.

Despite the software costs involved in building a repository being relatively low, staffing and upgrade costs make running a repository in the developing world both costly and time consuming. Hosted institutional repositories are increasingly being adopted as a highly effective method for archiving research output whilst providing a reliable, cost-effective solution that complies with institutional mandates.

BioMed Central’s “Open Repository” is a leading hosted archive solution that allows organisations to build, launch, host, and maintain their own repositories. Open Repository can store a wide variety of data types and is and is built upon the latest version of DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly works.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) well known for its humanitarian medical work adopted Open Repository in 2008. Now, MSF's research experience is available to health workers, policy makers and researchers across poorer countries where access to scientific publications is often difficult and expensive to obtain.

Through the use of Open Repository, librarians can manage and maintain all the research output of their organisations. The hosted solution allows administrators to focus their time on populating their repositories with content, rather than worrying about the day-to-day management of their systems. The additional freedom provided by Open Repository offers a much greater level of flexibility and the prospect of higher visibility for organisations.

Build and hosting a repository can be a major challenge for organisations based in the developing world. Open Repository therefore offers the perfect solution through delivering a high quality hosted product, bespoke to each organisation and at an affordable cost.

Free non-obligatory trials for the Open Repository system are now available. Visit our website to find out more: www.openrepository.com 

Claire Bundy
Business Development Manager
Open Repository
BioMed Central
E: claire.bundy[@]biomedcentral.com