Expert Panel: The Principles of Research Repository Design
Summary
Lots of effort in research is lost after it’s published. The problem is not the value of the insights but that the findings are fragmented across wikis, research repositories, and random folders in the cloud. Hear our expert panel share how they have designed research repositories that have succeeded at scale. Our all-star panelists will spend 30 minutes sharing their insights, followed by a Q&A session in Slack! You’ll hear from: Matt Duigan, Product Manager at Microsoft Andrew Michael, Founder at Avrio Research Repository Dr. Emily DiLeo, Archivist and Repository Designer
Key Insights
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Repositories must be tailored to the organization's current research program through upfront internal research.
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Effective research repositories require early stakeholder buy-in and the formation of active user communities.
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Knowledge management behaviors like consistent naming, organizing, and access policies are critical for repository success.
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A true single source of truth for research rarely exists; insights are dispersed across many apps and platforms.
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Integrating qualitative and quantitative data in a repository amplifies insight impact and drives better decision-making.
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Repositories need distribution strategies that embed research outputs where users already work, not just centralized storage.
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Human cognitive biases favor immediate rewards, making it difficult to motivate researchers to contribute reusable insights.
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Incentives and rewards must be designed to encourage deferred impact contributions and recognize long-term value creation.
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Content quality management roles, such as content PMs, are essential to maintain tagging, updating, and freshness of repository data.
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Setting validity periods and tagging content as evergreen or transient helps manage repository content longevity effectively.
Notable Quotes
"Your repository design needs to be guided by people and process, and internal research should be your first step."
"Everyone should know where everything is all the time — that’s the archivist’s motto for knowledge management."
"Research repositories aren’t single sources of truth anymore; data and insights live in hundreds of different apps across companies."
"It’s not enough to build a repository and expect people to come; you need a distribution strategy to put research where users are."
"Bringing qualitative and quantitative insights together creates more impactful decision-making across the organization."
"The hyperbolic discounting bias means researchers prefer immediate gratification over deferred rewards from reusable knowledge."
"You have to push against 200,000 years of evolution to encourage researchers to contribute to long-term repositories."
"To maintain tagging and freshness, you need content PMs with expertise, supported by robust content management processes."
"Tagging content as evergreen or setting validity periods helps automate cleaning and maintaining the repository over time."
"Building incentives and celebrating deferred impact rewards researchers and drives behavior towards reusable knowledge creation."
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