The project will establish, populate and promote an institutional repository service which will house and provide access to pre- and post-prints as well as e-theses. The target is to make available between 1,500-3,000 e-prints over the course of the eighteen-month project. The project will also enable development of the local infrastructure required to handle approximately 350 theses per annum in addition to any retrospectively digitised under the proposed EthOSnet service.

Warwick Research Archive Project (WRAP)


Start date: 1 October 2007

End date: 31 March 2009

Funding programme: Repositories and Preservation programme

Project website: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/repositories

JISC theme(s): Information environment, e-Resources, e-Research

Repositories Start Up Project

The project will capitalise on the learning from early adopter institutional repository projects (including Edinburgh, the Repositories Support Project etc.) and will make full use of the range of initiatives and shared infrastructure services sponsored by JISC to support IR developments. WRAP will also explore opportunities to build additional services around the IR although, given the priority focus on content population and project duration, it is likely that such work will largely be progressed after the end of the project. Each project phase will include qualitative and quantitative formative evaluation in addition to the summative project evaluation.

Aims and objectives 

The aim of the project is to establish, populate and promote an interoperable, open access and trusted Institutional Repository, known as WRAP, as part of the “JISC Repository Net”. The repository will house pre- and post-prints and e-theses and will use common standards and open source software to provide open access to research outputs, thus enabling scholarly communications for the benefit of the national/international research community. Reflections on the project by the project team will inform professional publishing and presentations to help provide practical advice to the wider Library and Information Science (LIS) community and to promote good practice.

Project methodology

A number of pilot departments will be selected in order to design and evaluate workflows for populating the repository, and then the scope will be widened to other departments. Research will be carried out into interoperability of the repository with other systems in use at Warwick, involving project staff and the University of Warwick IT Services department. An advocacy, training and support strategy will be devised and implemented by project staff and evaluation and reflection will follow each implementation phase.   

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

  • The technical commissioning of the WRAP institutional repository
  • Adoption of metadata schemas and design of deposit workflow(s)
  • Access to a target of 1,500 – 3,000 available research papers
  • Development of a local infrastructure to handle approximately 350 theses per annum
  • Evaluation of interoperability issues of search, authentication and federated access
  • Assessment of future needs and opportunities, including other IR data types and the opportunity to build additional services around the IR
  • A Warwick repositories website to promote and support learning and good practice
  • Dissemination activities at local, programme and national level

Technology / Standards used

  • EPrints open source institutional repository software
  • EThOS e-prints OAI plug-in
  • Dublin Core; UKMetadata Core Set for ETD (UKETD); Scholarly Works Application Profile; OAI-PMH

Lead Institution

University of Warwick    

project staff

Project Manager
Project Director
Project Assistant
  • To be appointed
  • Last updated on 15/02/08 by Andrew McGregor