About the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Research Repository
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Research Repository is an open access repository for the research produced by staff and research associates of RBG Kew.
Kew’s mission is to be the global resource for plant and fungal knowledge, building an understanding of the world’s plants and fungi upon which all our lives depend. We use the power of our science and the rich diversity of our gardens and collections to provide knowledge, inspiration and understanding of why plants and fungi matter to everyone.
We will only achieve this mission if we are able to share our research outputs with scientists, students, policymakers, governments and anyone else interested in our work. The outputs contained in this research repository encompass the work of around 350 science-based staff and around 200 honorary researchers and postgraduate students. This repository, for the first time, makes their research outputs discoverable and accessible for everybody.
Repository aims
The aims of the repository are to:
1. Provide a reliable source of information about research undertaken by Kew staff, individually or in collaboration with other research organisations
2. Provide a single point of open access to our full-text research outputs wherever possible
3. Make our research easier to find, and enhance the contribution we make to UK and international research
4. Respond to the open access expectations of our research funders.
Material not produced by or in association with Kew staff is not eligible for inclusion.
Content in the repository
The repository currently houses material such as journal articles, conference papers, books and book chapters, reports, datasets and images. Where the full item cannot be added, metadata about the research output is provided together with a link to the full item where possible.
Currently, this is a pilot repository. Therefore, not all of Kew’s research outputs are available. All peer-reviewed papers from January 2019 are currently held, along with some examples of datasets, maps, books and reports.
We hope that by April 2020 further outputs will be added, creating a complete repository for Kew’s contemporary research.
Shared repository service
The repository is part of a Shared Research Repository pilot service, encompassing the research outputs of a small number of UK cultural and heritage institutions: the British Library, British Museum, National Museums Scotland, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Our separate repositories can be visited each in turn or explored together via a single search through the collaborative Shared Repository page. The British Library manages the shared repository service. In the current beta phase, we welcome your feedback as we explore options to move to a full shared repository service.
The other repositories can be found here:
British Library research repository
British Museum research repository
National Museums Scotland research repository
Software
The repository is built using Samvera Hyku, a rapidly developing open source repository software in which multitenancy is a key feature. The British Library’s shared repository pilot project is an early adopter of the Hyku platform and the Library looks forward to sharing its experience around scalability, multi-tenancy and user experience.
The repository metadata is available for harvesting via the OAI-PMH protocol. The base URL is https://kew.iro.bl.uk/catalog/oai.