Upspace

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UPSpace (Institutional research repository of the University of Pretoria) is the name of the open access digital institutional repository of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. A digital institutional repository in the context of a higher education institution can be defined as “a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution.”.^[1] UPSpace contains a collection of the intellectual/ research output produced by past and current researchers of the University of Pretoria. The spectrum of material covered in UPSpace includes the following:

Historical/ archival material - after it has been digitized; Research articles (scholarly publications); Popular research material; Unpublished research; Inaugural addresses; Conference proceedings; Technical reports; Open lectures; Data sets, and many more.

The main objectives of an institutional repository are: 1) to enhance the visibility of the knowledge products created by an institution's members by providing easy open access, and 2) to preserve the intellectual output of the members of that community for years to come.

The open source platform, DSpace, which was developed by an MIT-Hewlett Packard alliance, is used for UPSpace.