Giving Pacific research greater reach
Dr Gerry Cotterell, Research Operations Manager, New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research
New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research
Launched in March 2016, the New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research (NZIPR) is a national institute aimed at promoting and supporting excellence in Pacific research, in order to deliver a world-class research programme focused on Pacific development, investment and foreign-policy issues. Key support partners are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Pacific Cooperation Foundation. The NZIPR comprises a consortium made up of the University of Auckland, Otago University and the Auckland University of Technology. Together the university partners bring expansive and unique Pacific research capacity and relationships, as well as educating three quarters of New Zealand’s Pacific students and employing ninety percent of New Zealand’s academics of Pacific Island descent.
Pacific research repository
As part of its mandate, NZIPR was charged with establishing a repository to enable the collection, collation, and dissemination of research data and outputs. NZIPR worked with the Centre for eResearch to connect with the Analysis & Policy Observatory (APO) in order to host the Repository (Figure 1). APO is a not-for-profit, open access research collection and information service curating key resources to support evidence-informed policy and practice.
This collection contains a wide range of digitised documents, government records, research reports, postgraduate theses and more. As a repository for the New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research, the collection plays a key role in disseminating public policy information from the NZIPR partners, together with relevant content by researchers in the Pacific and beyond. Using the collection repository with the website portal ensures there are tools to publish, search, manage and track content, people and organizations.
Access to the repository is seamlessly integrated from within the portal (http://www.nzipr.ac.nz) to the repository (http://apo.org.au/collections/pacific-research), making it simple to go from searching to discovery and utilization of the information. The repository will be expanded over time as more resources are located.
