How is an Institutional Repository different from an Open Access journal?
A. There are two discrete strands to the Open Access paradigm: The Open Access journal is a peer reviewed online journal and first cousin to the traditional subscription based scholarly journal. An Institutional Repository, however, does not publish material but simply makes material available that has already been published in a traditional peer-reviewed journal (so called post-prints) or that has been accepted for publication in a traditional peer-reviewed journal (so called pre-prints). Moreover, an Institutional Repository can contain “intellectual output” other than research; Learning Objects; “grey” literature (conference proceedings etc); students’ work (phD theses/Masters’ dissertations); digital images of heritage collections.
