Wageningen developed databases of publications by the different units that were to merge into Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wageningen UR). In 2006, the institutional repository, Wageningen Yield (WaY) became the access point to publications authored by university’s staff since 1976.

Repository Description

The subject areas covered by the repository are Agriculture, Food and Veterinary; Biology and Biochemistry; Chemistry and Chemical Technology; Ecology and Environment. The database is updated daily and currently holds more than 160 000 items  of various content types such as articles, references, theses and patents.

This OAI-PMH compliant repository is registered with Open DOAR and CIARD Ring and is ranked number 534 out of 1518 repositories by the Webmetrics website. The interface of the repository conforms to Wageningen UR pages and WaY  page is divided into four text columns, with the first with search and browse functionalities, and the two middle one with more information relating to the dynamic production of bibliographic lists with links to items within the repository.

Some items are available full text, however the vast majority of research publications included are simple bibliographic or abstract records, externally linked to publisher and journal Websites’. The last column to the left provides notices and contact information.

Value added services for Wageningen Yield (WaY)

• Strong institutional workflows – Existing publications databases existed before the repository and these were embedded in the workflows of Wageningen UR and provided strong submission workflows . Submission of publications to the repository is a mandatory part of the reporting cycle for research projects.
• METIS System - The research information system METIS is used as a tool for data entry. Input into this system is carried out by office managers from the different science groups.
• Value added services – researchers can use WaY to generate lists of their own (or their team's) publications from the shared institutional repository and embed them in their own websites.  This provides another incentive for authors and research groups to submit articles.
• Increases visibility of research outputs - WaY proactively makes the repository contents available through other services. Firstly, through OAI-PMH harvesting, the information can be searched through Narcis (the search engine for all Dutch Institutional Repositories) and OAIster. Secondly, the library has also joined forces with Elsevier's free science-specific search engine, Scirus, which now indexes the contents of WaY. Thirdly, citation data from Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science are available internally for each publication with analysis tools to check how a research group is performing over time and in comparison with other groups in the world.