Abstract

Yuko Murakami
National Institute of Informatics (NII), Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo

The interim evaluation method of the national project for institutional repositories in Japan

The National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan, was founded in April 2000 as an inter-university research institute. Its cyberscience infrastructure (CSI) initiative aims at providing industrial and social contributions as well as a base for international cooperation on scientific research. The initiative includes projects focusing on: networks, grid research, inter-university public key infrastructure (UPKI), and scholarly content services.
The project for institutional repositories, begun in 2004, is placed in the main focus of the CSI content project. In 2006, as the CSI initiative has put more emphasis on content services, NII began working with 57 universities to construct a next-generation scientific information resources infrastructure. One goal of the project is to spread open access repositories throughout Japan; 57 universities joined. The other goal is to support research and development activities that facilitate the dissemination of scholarly contents. 22 R&D projects have been allocated to 19 universities. The total budget for the 2006 academic year amounts to 300 million JPY (2.6 million USD). The project period is from August 1, 2006 to March 31, 2008.
The interim evaluation of the commissioned projects is to be conducted from February to March 2007. The evaluators may conclude to discontinue a project, and the evaluation will also focus on sharing the best practices and clarifying common problems. The check list for a proliferation project includes: system implementation progress, marketing practices, and the collection size. The cost for content digitization and registration is also to be surveyed. On the other hand, there is no uniform checklist for an R&D project since the range of these projects varies. Five committee members are in charge of evaluating all 22 R&D projects and discussing the direction of R&D, including the possibility of restructuring commissioned projects.
The paper describes the methods and results of the interim evaluation.