The Nereus international subject‐based repository

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the essential partnerships needed to better guarantee strong added value institutional repository (IR) service provision for faculty user satisfaction, resulting in the essential content acquisition for IRs.Design/methodology/approachThree crucial partnerships are described as a basis for the development of a meaningful institutional repository service. This paper concentrates on two partnerships: the first describes the importance of partnership between institutions; in this case, an international subject‐specific network: Nereus is an innovative consortium of 15 prestigious European universities and institutes in the area of economics. The second partnership goes into that of the library with its IR content providers and service end users by taking the Economists Online (EO) project model as a case in point.FindingsUniversity libraries and their changing active roles are building valuable partnerships with their clients and information providers; the Nereus consortium, and its EO project is a case in point where benefits are felt by both libraries and researchers. EO is a Nereus cornerstone and aims to increase the usability, accessibility and visibility of economics research by digitizing, organizing, archiving and disseminating the complete academic output of some of Europe's leading economists, with full text access as key. It is building an integrated online showcase of Europe based on IRs. EO's prime goal is to focus on services of direct value to the author, e.g. providing new full text content online, digitizing older material, creating automated publication lists, metadata quality‐control, more focused dissemination of content – all from one repository source and complimentary to the services publishers provide. Successful partnerships can be formed by designing and offering a strong product and service, combined with a good advocacy program containing arguments which support the researcher in his/her work process, and addressing real problems.Originality/valueNereus and Economists Online have the potential to be a model for adaptation in any disciplinary sector for disseminating and giving heightened access to scientific output online. Some of the critical success factors of these initiatives have been identified and expanded upon in the paper.