• The Guide is primarily aimed at professionals involved in the management of scientific repositories: managers, administrators, managers, technicians and support staff.
  • The objective of this Guide is to be an internal audit instrument to improve the quality of institutional open access repositories.

Madrid, May 6, 2021. The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) publishes the 4th edition of the [Guide for the evaluation of institutional research repositories] (https://www.recolecta.fecyt.es/node/1199). To prepare it, a working group has been established whose activity is part of the collaboration FECYT-REBIUN.

This Guide offers the entire national community a set of guidelines, based on existing international criteria, that guarantee the interoperability of all open access resources and ensure quality access to their contents. Having this self-assessment tool is an important help when it comes to detecting strengths and areas for improvement, which contributes to increasing the reach and visibility of the repositories among the scientific community. Additionally, for repositories that are in the planning phase, this document provides the necessary guidelines to consider to create a robust and visible infrastructure.

This Guide contains the RECOLECTA criteria for the evaluation of institutional research repositories. As a great novelty of this edition, the Guide includes the adaptation of the coding of the national funding source to the OpenAIRE standards and provides precise information about the [system for enriching this metadata] (https://www.fecyt.es/es/noticia/fecyt-pone-disposicion-de-los-repositorios-nacionales-de-acceso-abierto-un-servicio-para) that RECOLECTA offers through its web services.

Finally, this Guide shows the specific guidelines to delve into various legal and technical aspects that are of great importance for the community of repositories that host digital scientific content and that want to access global value-added services.