10 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 302 2021 Library Publishing and Institutional Repositories Institutions worldwide are sites of and incubators for transformations in research dissemination. Library publishing and institutional repository services contribute to the increase in digital scholarship artifacts that need to be managed and made available for discovery, access, and use. These areas of growth also present some challenges and pose questions. Fundamentally, how can library publishers and repositories ensure the discoverability of their content? How can usage be tracked to understand how this content is being used and cited? How can the metadata in publishing and repository platforms generate insights and reports on research activities? How can content be networked to identify connections between researchers and the outputs they generate? Incorporating open and PID-based infrastructure in these initiatives is one way to address these challenges and answer these questions. Institutions have several options in this regard. A starting point would be to make sure library publishers and institutional repositories are registering DOIs for their content and taking advantage of opportunities to enrich the DOI metadata with information to aid in tracking and discovery. For library publishers, becoming a Crossref member or choosing a platform or service provider that integrates with Crossref means that DOIs can be registered for publications. For institutional repositories, becoming a member of DataCite or using a platform or service provider that integrates with DataCite means that DOIs can be registered for repository content. However, registering DOIs is about more than just getting a DOI. While a DOI alone is useful insofar as it can provide a permanent reference to an object regardless of whether the object’s location changes over time, a DOI becomes much more useful when it includes rich metadata.5
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