TRAC: B6.1: Access and delivery options

B6.1 Repository documents and communicates to its designated community(ies) what access and delivery options are available.

Repository policies should document the various aspects of access to and delivery of the preserved information. Generally, the designated community(ies) should know the policies or at least the consequences of them. The users should know what they can ask for, when, and how, and what it costs, among other things. [See Appendix 6: Understanding Digital Repositories & Access Functionality for an in-depth review of digital repository access requirements.]

Repositories might have to deal with a single, homogeneous community or with multiple or disparate communities. Different policies might be needed for different communities as well as for different collection types.

Evidence: Public versions of access policies; delivery policies; fee policies.

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Access is one of ICPSR's strong suits.  Evidence to support this TRAC requirement can be found across many different pages on ICPSR's public web portal.

For example, if we take study 2999 (Israeli Election Study, 1999 - the first hit when searching for 'election' on the portal), the home page displays a section called Access Notes which makes it clear what it is possible to do with the content.

If one clicks through the link to download content, the next display makes it clear what formats are available.

And there are also pages describing how to become a consortium member, how much things cost if you are not a member, etc.

And if there are versions of content available in both public-use and restricted-use versions, the site also makes that clear.