Digital Repository Administration and Research Data Services Training Course

Course Introduction

Digital Repository Administration And Research Data Services Training Course provides a comprehensive foundation for managing institutional digital repositories and delivering effective research data services. The course examines the organizational, technical, metadata, governance, preservation, access, and user-support functions required to operate sustainable repositories that support scholarly communication, research data management, open science, and long-term digital stewardship.

The course explores the complete administration lifecycle of digital repositories, from platform configuration, collection development, metadata management, user administration, content ingestion, and quality assurance to access management, preservation, reporting, monitoring, and system maintenance. Participants learn how repository administrators can establish reliable workflows and operational controls that support researchers, librarians, archivists, academic departments, and institutional stakeholders.

A major component of the training focuses on research data services delivered through digital repository environments. Participants examine how institutions can support researchers with data management planning, dataset deposit, metadata creation, data documentation, licensing, persistent identifiers, FAIR principles, controlled access, preservation, discovery, and responsible reuse. The course also addresses integration between research data repositories and institutional research information systems, publication platforms, identifier services, and external discovery infrastructure.

The course addresses repository governance and service management, including institutional policies, roles and responsibilities, collection policies, access rules, copyright, licensing, privacy, security, ethical requirements, and data retention. Participants learn how to develop administrative frameworks that balance openness and research reuse with appropriate protection for sensitive, confidential, restricted, or legally protected research materials.

Advanced topics cover repository interoperability, APIs, metadata harvesting, machine-readable metadata, persistent identifiers, usage analytics, automated workflows, cloud infrastructure, repository monitoring, artificial intelligence, metadata enrichment, research information integration, and emerging digital repository technologies. Participants also examine service sustainability, system migration, disaster recovery, performance optimization, user engagement, and continuous improvement.

Through practical exercises and an integrated repository administration project, participants develop the ability to plan and manage a digital repository while designing a coordinated research data service. The course is intended to strengthen institutional capacity for managing scholarly assets, supporting researchers, improving data discovery and reuse, maintaining trustworthy digital collections, and delivering sustainable repository services.

Duration

10 days

Who Should Attend

• Digital repository administrators responsible for the operation and management of institutional repositories

• Institutional repository managers overseeing scholarly publications, datasets, and digital collections

• Research data librarians developing and delivering research data management services

• University librarians supporting digital scholarship, scholarly communication, and open research

• Research data managers responsible for dataset deposit, documentation, access, and preservation

• Digital archivists managing institutional digital collections and long-term access

• Metadata librarians and specialists responsible for repository metadata quality and standards

• Repository systems administrators managing infrastructure, configuration, integrations, and security

• Research support officers assisting researchers with data management and repository services

• Data stewards and governance professionals supporting institutional research data management

• Scholarly communication professionals managing publications, datasets, identifiers, and open access services

• Information technology professionals supporting repository platforms and research information systems

• Research administrators developing institutional repository policies and research data service frameworks

• Open science professionals implementing FAIR data, responsible sharing, and research transparency initiatives

• Researchers and principal investigators seeking to understand institutional repository and research data services

• Professionals involved in digital preservation, research infrastructure, information management, and scholarly publishing

Course Objectives

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of digital repository administration and its role in supporting institutional research, scholarly communication, digital preservation, and data services.

• Configure and administer repository platforms, collections, communities, users, permissions, workflows, metadata structures, and operational settings effectively.

• Design robust repository workflows for content submission, review, metadata quality assurance, approval, publication, preservation, and ongoing maintenance.

• Develop research data services that support researchers throughout data planning, creation, documentation, deposit, publication, preservation, access, and responsible reuse.

• Apply metadata standards, controlled vocabularies, persistent identifiers, and interoperability mechanisms to improve repository discovery and research data management.

• Establish appropriate repository policies covering collection development, access, licensing, copyright, privacy, preservation, retention, security, and responsible data sharing.

• Implement FAIR data principles and machine-actionable repository practices that improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of research resources.

• Manage repository users, roles, authentication, authorization, access controls, embargoes, restricted collections, and administrative responsibilities.

• Apply digital preservation, backup, disaster recovery, integrity monitoring, version control, and storage management practices to protect repository assets.

• Integrate repositories with research information systems, identifier services, publisher platforms, harvesting services, APIs, and other scholarly infrastructure.

• Use repository analytics, monitoring, reporting, automation, and emerging technologies to improve service performance, user engagement, data quality, and operational efficiency.

• Design and implement an integrated digital repository administration and research data services strategy that supports institutional priorities and long-term sustainability.

Comprehensive Course Outline

Module 1: Foundations Of Digital Repository Administration And Research Data Services

• Concepts, purposes, functions, and organizational roles of institutional digital repositories

• Evolution of repositories from scholarly publication archives to integrated research data and digital scholarship platforms

• Relationship between repository administration, scholarly communication, research data management, open science, and digital preservation

• Key stakeholders, service models, operational responsibilities, governance structures, and institutional repository objectives

Module 2: Digital Repository Architecture And Platform Administration

• Repository architecture components including application services, databases, storage, metadata, search, and access layers

• Repository platform installation, configuration, system settings, collections, communities, and administrative structures

• Managing repository environments, dependencies, upgrades, integrations, system performance, and technical documentation

• Infrastructure planning for scalability, availability, resilience, security, and sustainable repository operations

Module 3: Repository Collections, Communities And Content Management

• Designing communities, collections, research groups, departments, faculties, projects, and organizational structures

• Developing collection policies, submission requirements, content scopes, retention rules, and ownership responsibilities

• Managing scholarly publications, research datasets, reports, theses, software, multimedia, and other digital research outputs

• Establishing content lifecycle processes for submission, review, publication, revision, withdrawal, retention, and disposal

Module 4: Repository Users, Roles And Access Administration

• Creating and managing repository users, groups, roles, permissions, and administrative responsibilities

• Authentication and authorization mechanisms for researchers, librarians, administrators, reviewers, and external users

• Configuring access controls, embargoes, restricted datasets, private collections, and differentiated levels of repository access

• Managing user support, account security, role reviews, administrative audits, and access governance

Module 5: Repository Submission And Ingest Workflows

• Designing structured workflows for researcher submissions, metadata entry, file upload, review, approval, and publication

• Deposit requirements, submission validation, file inspection, quality checks, and content acceptance criteria

• Managing bulk ingest, batch submissions, migration projects, legacy collections, and large research datasets

• Workflow automation, notifications, task assignment, exception handling, and operational quality control

Module 6: Metadata Management And Repository Discovery

• Descriptive, administrative, structural, technical, and preservation metadata within digital repositories

• Metadata standards, schemas, controlled vocabularies, authority files, identifiers, and discipline-specific requirements

• Metadata quality assurance, normalization, validation, enrichment, mapping, and crosswalk development

• Search indexing, discovery interfaces, metadata harvesting, catalogs, and external research discovery services

Module 7: Research Data Management And Repository Services

• Research data lifecycle concepts and the role of repositories in institutional research data management

• Data management planning, dataset deposit, documentation, metadata, data organization, and repository preparation

• Researcher support services for data sharing, preservation, licensing, access, FAIR principles, and responsible reuse

• Developing institutional research data service workflows that connect researchers, repositories, libraries, archives, and research offices

Module 8: FAIR Data, Persistent Identifiers And Research Interoperability

• Implementing Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability principles within repository services

• Persistent identifiers for datasets, publications, researchers, organizations, projects, and related research entities

• Repository interoperability through APIs, harvesting protocols, standardized metadata, linked data, and machine-readable services

• Connecting repository resources with research information systems, publisher platforms, data catalogs, and external scholarly infrastructures

Module 9: Digital Preservation And Repository Sustainability

• Digital preservation principles for maintaining the authenticity, integrity, usability, and accessibility of repository resources

• File format management, fixity checking, version control, preservation metadata, storage replication, and preservation actions

• Backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, system migration, platform upgrades, and repository succession planning

• Developing technical, organizational, financial, and operational strategies for long-term repository sustainability

Module 10: Governance, Policies, Rights And Responsible Repository Management

• Developing repository governance frameworks, policies, roles, responsibilities, decision-making structures, and accountability mechanisms

• Copyright, intellectual property, licensing, ownership, data-use conditions, and permissions for repository content

• Privacy, confidentiality, sensitive research data, ethical restrictions, controlled access, and responsible data-sharing practices

• Establishing collection, retention, preservation, access, withdrawal, and content management policies

Module 11: Repository Security, Privacy And Risk Management

• Repository security principles covering authentication, authorization, encryption, system hardening, monitoring, and secure administration

• Identifying and managing risks associated with unauthorized access, data loss, system failure, malicious activity, and configuration errors

• Privacy protection and secure handling of personal, confidential, sensitive, and restricted research data

• Developing incident response, security monitoring, access review, vulnerability management, and repository risk assessment procedures

Module 12: Repository Analytics, Reporting And Service Performance

• Repository usage statistics, downloads, views, deposits, collection growth, user activity, and research impact indicators

• Designing administrative dashboards, operational reports, service-level indicators, and management information

• Using analytics to understand researcher behavior, collection performance, discovery patterns, and repository service demand

• Developing evidence-based service improvement strategies using repository metrics, feedback, benchmarking, and performance monitoring

Module 13: Repository Integration, Automation And Advanced Services

• Integrating repositories with research information systems, ORCID, DOI services, library systems, authentication platforms, and publishing infrastructure

• APIs, web services, metadata harvesting, automated synchronization, batch processing, and machine-to-machine communication

• Automated metadata extraction, validation, enrichment, classification, duplicate detection, and research output identification

• Designing scalable automated workflows that reduce administrative effort while maintaining metadata and content quality

Module 14: AI, Machine-Actionable Metadata And Emerging Repository Technologies

• Artificial intelligence applications for metadata generation, classification, semantic enrichment, recommendation, and repository discovery

• Machine-actionable metadata, knowledge graphs, linked research data, semantic search, and intelligent scholarly infrastructure

• Cloud-native repositories, distributed research data infrastructure, intelligent preservation, and automated repository management

• Emerging developments in FAIR Digital Objects, research software repositories, computational research objects, and intelligent data services

Module 15: Researcher Engagement, Service Development And Continuous Improvement

• Designing researcher-focused repository services based on user needs, disciplinary requirements, institutional priorities, and research workflows

• Researcher training, consultations, data management support, repository onboarding, communication, and service adoption strategies

• Evaluating service quality through user feedback, usage analytics, support requests, performance indicators, and stakeholder reviews

• Developing continuous improvement programmes for repository functionality, research data services, metadata quality, and user experience

Module 16: Integrated Digital Repository Administration And Research Data Services Practicum

• Conducting an operational assessment of a digital repository covering architecture, collections, users, metadata, workflows, preservation, security, and services

• Designing an integrated repository administration framework with policies, roles, workflows, technical controls, and research data service components

• Developing a practical implementation roadmap for repository improvement, research data services, interoperability, preservation, automation, and sustainability

• Presenting and evaluating an integrated repository service strategy with measurable objectives, risks, resources, governance requirements, and continuous improvement mechanisms

Training Approach

This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.

Tailor-Made Course

This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808

Training Venue 

The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.

Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant

Certification

Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.

Airport Pickup and Accommodation

Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808

Terms of Payment:

Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.