EIFL developed this checklist to help repository managers and administrators, librarians and other support staff involved in managing scholarly output at research and educational institutions to enhance their DSpace open access repositories. DSpace is the most commonly used repository software in EIFL partner countries.

The checklist is a living document that we update periodically. It started with tips drawn from a series of webinars organized by EIFL with experts from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, United Kingdom) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), in 2016. The experts, Nason Bimbe (IDS) and Hilton Gibson (Stellenbosch University), shared suggestions and good practices in setting up and running OA repositories using DSpace free and open source software.

This is the fourth revision of the checklist. It includes new recommendations on how to improve discoverability of documents in repositories by search engines; how to ensure that a repository is discoverable, and how to write an OA repository policy. We also include new sections on standardized approaches to metadata and on how to license repositories.