Faculty self archiving behavior factors affecting the decision…

Faculty self-archiving behavior : factors affecting the decision to self-archive :

“A transformation in scholarly communication is occurring due to the interactions among Internet technologies, new ways of accessing and disseminating scholarly content, as well as changes in the legal, economic, and policy aspects of scholarly publication systems. Self-archiving – the placement of research material on publicly accessible web sites – is an emerging practice used to disseminate scholarly content in a cost-effective and timely manner. This practice is supported by university libraries and public funding agencies through the support or provision of Open Access repository services. Nevertheless, many repositories suffer from low rates of participation. Institutional Repositories (IRs), in particular, have difficulty recruiting content from faculty members whose conduct research and generate a wide variety of research materials. To address this problem, I investigate the motivational factors affecting faculty to participation in various forms of self-archiving practices.

Based on the socio-technical network framework, this study views self-archiving practices as intertwined with technologies and social factors. The factors identified include cost, benefit, and contextual aspects of self-archiving, in addition to individual characteristics. To examine these significant factors affecting self-archiving, my research design involves triangulation of survey and interview data of faculty members sampled from 17 Carnegie Research Universities with DSpace IRs. The sample is also stratified by academic discipline due to existing evidence of variation based on fields.

The analysis of survey responses from 684 professors and 41 phone interviews found that the factor of altruism has the strongest effect on faculty self-archiving. This factor, however, is characterized more by reciprocity, rather than pure altruism. Self-archiving culture has the second greatest impact on the decision to self-archive. Therefore, faculty self-archiving is influenced greatly by intrinsic benefits or disciplinary norms, as opposed to extrinsic benefits. Concerning IRs in particular, results shows that the primary reason professors contribute to the repositories is the perceived ability of IRs to preserve scholarly content. This implies that digital preservation should be significantly more a core function of IRs. IR contributors are also concerned about copyright than non-contributors. Thus IR staff need to provide guidance for copyright management to alleviate this concern and any confusion.”

URL : http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61564/1/jhkz_1.pdf

Open Access Institutional Archives A Quantitative Study 2006-2010…

Open Access Institutional Archives: A Quantitative Study (2006-2010) :

“Open access publishing is growing in importance, and, in parallel, the role of institutional archives has come to the forefront of discussion within the library community. The present study is an attempt to analyse the present trend of institutional archives worldwide. The factual data of each individual repository was collected from various Directories of Institutional Repositories by using survey method. Data was analysed in terms of quantity of institutional archives increased during last six years, country-wise contents of institutional archives, types of materials archived, subject coverage, software used, language of interface of institutional archives, host domains, and policy of institutional archives. The results of the study suggest healthy growth in terms of quantity of institutional archives’ increase worldwide, however, the development is more prevalent in developed countries than developing countries. The subject analysis of the institutional archives indicates that the contributors in the field of health and medicine are more interested to submit their materials in repositories. Currently the institutional archives mostly house traditional (print-oriented) scholarly publications and grey literature, using DSpace software and most of these materials were of English language. However, the policy of content inclusion, submission and preservation is yet to be well defined in institutional archives.”

URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/1112

Characteristics of Education Doctoral Dissertation References An Inter…

Characteristics of Education Doctoral Dissertation References: An Inter-Institutional Analysis of Review of Literature Citations :

“This study had two purposes: to examine the expertise of doctoral students in their use of the scholarly literature and to investigate the use of citation analysis as a tool for collection development. Analysis of 1,842 coded citations gleaned from 30 education dissertations awarded in 2000 from 3 institutions in the United States revealed that journal articles, at 45%, were cited most frequently, followed by monographs (33.9%) and “other” (18.3%), with magazines and Web sites contributing less than 2% each of the total material types cited. The study examined 858 journal and magazine citations, which were found in 239 unique titles. A relatively small number of journals contained a high percentage of the references found in the dissertations analyzed. Based on a design by D. Kohl and L. Wilson (1986), dissertation citations were also scored for scholarliness, currency, and appropriateness of format, and scores on the three criteria were averaged to arrive at a quality rating. Results of interinstitutional comparisons revealed a significant amount of variation and were considered in conjunction with institutional characteristics and published criteria for quality bibliographies. The data suggest that the assumption of doctoral student expertise in their use of the scholarly literature may be overstated and should be examined in relation to their preparation for professional status. For purposes of developing a library’s research collection, a core list of titles, generated on the basis of multiple, rather than single, institutional analysis is indicated. (Contains 8 figures, 11 tables, and 28 references.)”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15870

Establishing an Institutional Repository A UNISA Case Study…

Establishing an Institutional Repository: A UNISA Case Study :

“The purpose of the paper is to share and learn about the roles of Academic Libraries with reference to the establishment of the Institutional Repository as a mechanism which can benefit scholars to expose their work, putting the institution at the level where-in its research output can
be evaluated and accessed by their peers. The institutional repository provides opportunity for citations, providing an opportunity for the required expose to other web based access tools. It can provide an alternative to the conventional publishing channel. The paper will focus on the practical experience of the UNISA library as a result of the implementation of the Institutional Repository through a pilot project.

UNISA, as an international university with its vision “Towards the African University in the service of humanity” has comprehensive and valuable research output by its academics. The institutional repository is a tool which can benefit scholars to expose their work and putting the
institution at the level where in its research out can be evaluated and accessed by their peers. The
institutional repository provides opportunity for citations, publication which is free, providing an opportunity for the required expose to other web based access tools.

One of UNISA’s strategic objectives is to implement an institutional repository, starting with the pilot project in 2008. This decision has created a positive platform for the library to utilize the
skills available to create a repository for the research output for UNISA. UNISA library has embarked on a pilot project to establish an institutional repository as a vehicle to expose its academic research output in a coherent manner. There are challenges in the process which require further debates on the benefits this platform would bring to both the university and individual academics. There is still a lot of mistrust, resistance and lack of skills from academics. Unless the information is shared, debates and workshops are held on the benefits from putting ones work on the institutional repository, African researchers will continue to aspire to exposure outside Africa. Institutional repositories can provide the platform to electronic journals, with a bigger potential if co-ordinated through the academic institutions to have the African market of
researchers more exposed, thus building our own African research output. The benefit of this is to
disseminate the research of African academics.

An overview of the role the Library plays in creation and establishing the Institutional repository will be provided. Information will be shared with the colleagues who wish to establish an Institutional Repository, while also providing an opportunity to learn how to utilize the tool to benefit researchers who are challenged, in terms of publishing their work. The academic libraries in higher education are willing to assist in establish a platform through the institutional repository, which is available through any internet.

The paper will conclude by highlighting some solutions to ensure that the research work of academics is exposed to the world. It will also provide an alternative to start providing access for potential articles which can get into the “international journals”. It will tell the UNISA library
story.”

URL : http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/4297

Best practices and policies in institutional repositories development: The Ktisis case

Libraries worldwide have realized the importance of institutional repositories in the intellectual life and output of an institution. Institutional repositories are now clearly recognized as essential infrastructure in the digital world. An institutional repository is a means for the institutions to manage the product of their academic research and to increase accessibility to that product. Generally, institutional repository development is still in the process of establishing guiding principles and best practices, through established cases which can be used to learn development options and risks.

This paper begins with a brief description of the implementation process of Ktisis, the open access institutional repository of the Cyprus University of Technology, and continues to describe the set of activities used in the strategic plan of Ktisis. Among those activities was the definition of the promotional plan, the engagement in the international community and the definition of the Ktisis policy of use.

URL : http://ktisis.cut.ac.cy/handle/10488/4837

Institutional Repositories Long Term Preservation and the changing…

Institutional Repositories, Long Term Preservation and the changing nature of Scholarly Publications :

“The web offers new opportunities for scholars to publish the outcome of their research. One of these new forms is called Enhanced Publications. In an Enhanced Publication different objects and files that has a meaningful and close relation to each other are aggregated on the level of a resource map in witch not only the separate files are described, but also the relation between those files are. An example of an Enhanced Publication is a digital text publication and a dataset on which the publication is based. Preserving these compound entities in the existing infrastructures raises new issues. This article discusses these issues against the background of the Dutch long term preservation infrastructure and organisation.”

URL : http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/1764/1851

Institutional Repositories and Digital Preservation Assessing Current Practices…

Institutional Repositories and Digital Preservation: Assessing Current Practices at Research Libraries :

“In spring 2010, authors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst conducted a national survey on digital preservation of Institutional Repository (IR) materials among Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. Examining the current practices of digital preservation of IR materials, the survey of 72 research libraries reveals the challenges and opportunities of implementing digital preservation for IRs in a complex environment with rapidly evolving technology, practices, and standards. Findings from this survey will inform libraries about the current state of digital preservation for IRs.”

URL : http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may11/yuanli/05yuanli.html