Nearly 40 repository managers, representing close to all repositories in Poland, gathered in Warsaw on April 27, 2015, for a one-day workshop entitled „Scientific repositories in Poland – challenges and chances”. The workshop was organized by the Open Science Platform – an initiative of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw – who also function as the OpenAIRE 2020 NOAD in Poland.

The workshop started with a webinar run by Ben McLeish of Altmetric, who spoke about „Enhancing the feedback loop: adding context to your scholarly platform”. Ben explained why alternative article-level metrics are useful and how they are generated. He also showed how to embed free Altmetric badges on a repository platform. This last topic has generated special interest and several questions about it came up at the end of the webinar.

Two presentations followed from experienced repository managers from Poland. The first was given by Małgorzata Rychlik who runs the Adam Mickiewicz University Repository (AMUR) – the oldest and largest university repository in Poland. She spoke about the „Benefits arising from a well-developing university repository” (“Zyski z dobrze rozwijającego się repozytorium uczelnianego”), discussing how a repository helps increase the international visibility of both individual researchers and the institution as a whole. She reported some of the feedback her repository receives from the most active users, showing in this way which aspects of the repository service these researchers value most.

The second presentation was by Lidia Mikołajuk and Aleksandra Brzozowska from the University of Łódź Repository – another well-developed institutional repository. In their presentation, which had the title „Researcher! Get out of the drawer, or how to communicate the benefits of making your work open through repositories” (“Naukowcu! Wyjdź z szuflady, czyli jak komunikować korzyści z deponowania w repozytorium”), they first discussed the benefits an institutional repository brings to all institutional stakeholders and then they concentrated on what steps  – according to their experiences – are most important for the process of convincing researchers that depositing their work is worth the effort.

Next, Marta Hoffman-Sommer from the Open Science Platform and the OpenAIRE 2020 NOAD presented the OpenAIRE project series and the OpenAIRE infrastructure and services. Her talk, entitled „Polish scientific repositories in OpenAIRE – why register?” (Polskie repozytoria naukowe w OpenAIRE - czy warto się rejestrować?), highlighted the benefits of registering a repository with OpenAIRE.

In the final part of the workshop, Małgorzata Rychlik from AMUR and Dominik Purchała from the repository for historical sciences Lectorium presented their idea of initiating an informal coalition of Polish scientific repositories. The aim of such an organization would be mainly to work together on the adoption of common standards concerning technical issues, such as for example metadata standards or exchange protocols, which would help ensure the interoperability of Polish repositories, but also to discuss best practices, to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, and to foster cooperation between individual repositories. This presentation elicited a vivid discussion. Many issues important for the community were mentioned, such as doubling of the same resources on multiple open platforms, the relation between institutional and subject-specific repositories, long-term storage of data, hosting closed-access items in repositories that define themselves as „open”, and more. Some further issues raised were strictly technical and will be continued on the Polish DSpace User Forum. The discussion led finally to the conclusion that many workshop participants feel the need for cooperation and knowledge exchange, and so a mailing list will be created in order to further develop the idea of a Polish repository coalition.

If you want to know more, contact the Polish OpenAIRE NOAD.