Promoting the visibility of educational research through an institutional repository

Established in 1994 through the amalgamation of several teacher training colleges, The Hong Kong Institute of Education is the major multidisciplinary teacher education provider in the Hong Kong SAR. Despite this, the Institute does not have a particularly high research profile when compared with its peer institutions in Hong Kong and around the world, with its research publishing achieving modest exposure and impact in international educational research literature. The Institute has a goal to attain the title of a “university of education” and has identified an improvement in its research output and profile as critical to achieving this. It was in this context that the HKIEd Library embarked on the redevelopment of its institutional repository, changing its direction from being an archive of institutional publications to one which brought together and offered access to the sum total of published output of the Institute since its foundation, in a deliberate effort to promote Institute research. This paper explores the particular approach taken by the Library to the development of the institutional repository, how the repository contributes directly to and aligns with the research strategies of the Institute, and the impact the Repository has had so far on improving the profile of research at HKIEd. Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.