Primary Research Group has published The Survey of Institutional Digital Repositories, 2012-13 Edition, ISBN 1-57440-207-2.

This 226-page study explores the habits and practices of 38 digital repositories from a collection of universities and non-higher education institutions in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and a host of other countries from developed and developing areas alike. With over 400 benchmarking tables, the report cites budgetary and revenue data as well as cataloging and open access statistics, detailing just what items these repositories contain: books, journals, magazines, textbooks, audio and video files, and much more. An emphasis is placed on the repository's marketing efforts, offering insights as to how institutions utilize blogs, press releases, SEO techniques, and other linking strategies to advance the repository's presence. Extensive tracking statistics highlight trends in user downloads and overall visits while also exploring the relationships these repositories maintain with their authors. What strides has the repository taken to establish itself as a publisher in its own right? Which academic departments are most frequently represented in the digital repository? How is the digital repository funded? These questions and more are answered here, with data broken out by public or private status of the college, FTE enrollment, Carnegie class, annual budget, and the number of years the repository has been in operation.

Just a few of the many findings from this report are:

• 84.21 percent of survey participants say their digital repository contains journal articles written by faculty, while just 50 percent say their repositories contain faculty-written books
• Only 5.41 percent of participants say the repository has--either alone or in concert with others--established any form of peer review network
• For the repositories in the sample, median spending on marketing the digital repository to users over the past year was $0; the majority of participants (if they had spent anything at all) spent well under $1,000
• For US-based repositories, the mean percentage of downloads originating from US sources is 66.94 percent, while the mean for repositories in all other developed countries is 15.61 percent
• According to our survey, the biggest departmental contributor to the digital repository is the Physics department, as 42 percent of participants considers this department to be either a "significant" or "heavy" contributor
• 43 percent of survey participants say their repository contains no archived photographs or digital images
• 80 percent of the repositories in the sample are funded largely from the main library budget
• The mean number of unique visitors per year to the digital repository's website is 69,350

The study is available in print and PDF format for $98.00. Site licenses cost $249.00. To view a table of contents, list of questions and participants, and sample data, or to order a copy of the report, please visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.