Bottom up needs versus central policy in the institutional repository of the Academy of Sciences ASEP

Since 1993, the ASEP database has been in operation in the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), where CAS institutes store records of their publication activities. (From ASEP, records are sent to the national CRIS system), ASEP allows linking publication outputs with the data on which they were based and the projects from which they were funded. The database is operated (developement and administration) by the Library of Czech Academy of Sciences, who also provide training and workshops for researchers.

In 2012, the Repository of Full Texts was created within this database - a sharp increase in usage since 2014 - as the evaluation of science within the CAS began to require full texts. The data repository was established in 2018. Due to new grant conditions and following the implementation of the EU Directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information, we expect an early increase in the number of datasets stored from 2023.

Publication and datasets by authors from the Czech Academy of Sciences can be added to database. Authorised persons at institutes of the CAS (ASEP administrators) are responsible for adding records to ASEP.

The bottom-up process is slow and concerns mainly certain scientific fields, which implement it often through disciplinary data repositories, but it is often more the activity of few "progressive" institutions or even individual scientists. Only changes in requirements at a systemic level leads to a comprehensive transformation of the scientific environment. A timely response to the needs defined by the bottom-up allows subsequent readiness for the changes in the "external" environment. ASEP is therefore ready for the mandatory practices of open science, defined by new policy, by responding to earlier, relatively sporadic, requirements of researchers.