institutional repositories – Page 7

Utilisation of open access institutional repositories in Zimbabwe’s public universities

Posté le 28 janvier 2018 par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Mass Masona Tapfuma

Despite the establishment of institutional repositories (IRS) in Zimbabwe’s public universities, content for these repositories remains untangible. The purpose of this study was to explore the utilisation of IRs in the universities.

The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Usage of Technology (UTAUT) model was used to understand individuals behaviours’ towards acceptance of technologies. The pragmatist paradigm guided the study employing the mixed methods research (MMR) approach combining quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Triangulation was used to obtain a deeper understanding of the research problem. Eight public universities were surveyed including all levels of academics, research directors, library directors and IR/faculty librarians. A census, stratified and systematic sampling techniques were adopted to constitute the sample of the study.

A survey was carried out aided by questionnaires and interviews. Document analysis (policies and so forth) and bibliometric analysis were also employed including attending a Zimbabwe University Libraries Consortium (ZULC) workshop.

The findings of the study revealed a high awareness of OA/IRs by the academic community but content deposits were very low despite the existence of research and OA/IR policies (in some of the universities) which mandated deposit of research funded by the universities. A national repository was also established by the Research Council of Zimbabwe to link all repositories in the country while ZULC was lobbying for the development of a national OA policy. T

he study concluded that Zimbabwe’s university libraries faced numerous challenges in marketing and promoting of repositories, therefore, the concept of IRs remains in the infancy stage. It was recommended that: the libraries should intensify OA/IR education efforts; incentivise scholars/academics and library staff; resolve IPR issues and strengthen deposit mandates.

The study would contribute to practice in the establishment, running, management and promotion of repositories and policy makers will be informed and guided in the development and implementation of OA policies and regulatory frameworks leading to the establishment of the requisite infrastructure for OA/IR establishment in all academic institutions in the country, the national repository and the national content harvesting systems. Further research to probe the causes of low deposit rates and why scholars prefer depositing elsewhere is recommended.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10413/14893

Where Are We Now? Survey on Rates of Faculty Self-Deposit in Institutional Repositories

Posté le 2 décembre 2017 par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Ruth Kitchin Tillman

INTRODUCTION

The literature of institutional repositories generally indicates that faculty do not self-deposit, but there is a gap in the research of reported self-deposit numbers that might indicate how widespread and common this is.

METHODS

This study was conducted using a survey instrument that requested information about whether a repository allowed self-deposit and what its rates of self-deposit were, if known.

The instrument contained additional questions intended to gather a broader context of repositories to be examined for any correlations with higher rates of self-deposit. It also included questions about the kinds of labor required to populate an IR as well as satisfaction with the rates of self-deposit.

RESULTS

Of 82 respondents, 80 were deemed to fall within the study’s parameters. Of these, 55 respondents’ institutions allowed self-deposit, and 10 reported rates of self-deposit of more than 20 items per month.

More than half the total respondents reported using at least three methods other than relying on self-deposit to add content to their repository. Respondents are generally unsatisfied with their deposit profiles, including one at a school reporting the highest rate of self-deposit.

DISCUSSION

From the responses, no profile could be formed of respondents reporting high rates of self-deposit that did not entirely overlap with many others reporting little or no self-deposit. However, the survey identifies factors without which high rates are unlikely.

CONCLUSION

The results of this survey may be most useful as a factor in administrative prioritizations and expectations regarding institutional repositories as sites of scholarly self-deposit.

URL : Where Are We Now? Survey on Rates of Faculty Self-Deposit in Institutional Repositories

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2203

Lessons Learned in Partnerships and Practice: Adopting Open Source Institutional Repository Software

Posté le 14 septembre 2017 par Hans Dillaerts

Author: Amy Leigh Allen

INTRODUCTION

After the establishment of the University Archives at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, it became apparent that processes needed to be established for collecting, preserving, and providing access to born-digital materials.

The University Archivist established partnerships across multiple departments within the Libraries and with faculty and staff of colleges, schools, and administrative units across campus to test open source repository software and develop collections to fulfill this need.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

This case study examines three specific projects and workflows providing access to digital undergraduate honors theses, university serials, and music concert recordings. Lessons learned during the project include the success strategies for partnership formation along with the identification of project processes that need improvement, such as promotion and long term preservation.

NEXT STEPS AND CONCLUSIONS

The campus has transitioned to a proprietary system for the official institutional repository. However, the pilot projects examined in this study filled intermediate needs: providing a group of files and metadata for the official institutional repository and helping the Libraries to evaluate the sustainability of open source platforms.

Staff gained experience and identified areas where improvement was needed. However, the most successful aspect of the project was establishing partnerships that will carry over to the new repository.

URL : Lessons Learned in Partnerships and Practice: Adopting Open Source Institutional Repository Software

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2170

Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

Posté le 27 août 2017 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Julia A. Lovett, Andrée J. Rathemacher, Divana Boukari, Corey Lang

INTRODUCTION

The popularity of academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu indicates that scholars want to share their work, yet for universities with Open Access (OA) policies, these sites may be competing with institutional repositories (IRs) for content.

This article seeks to reveal researcher practices, attitudes, and motivations around uploading their work to ResearchGate and complying with an institutional OA Policy through a study of faculty at the University of Rhode Island (URI).

METHODS

We conducted a population study to examine the participation by 558 full-time URI faculty members in the OA Policy and ResearchGate followed by a survey of 728 full-time URI faculty members about their participation in the two services.

DISCUSSION The majority of URI faculty does not participate in the OA Policy or use ResearchGate. Authors’ primary motivations for participation are sharing their work more broadly and increasing its visibility and impact.

Faculty who participate in ResearchGate are more likely to participate in the OA Policy, and vice versa. The fact that the OA Policy targets the author manuscript and not the final published article constitutes a significant barrier to participation.

CONCLUSION

Librarians should not view academic social networks as a threat to Open Access. Authors’ strong preference for sharing the final, published version of their articles provides support for calls to hasten the transition to a Gold OA publishing system.

Misunderstandings about the OA Policy and copyright indicate a need for librarians to conduct greater education and outreach to authors about options for legally sharing articles.

URL : Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2183

Institutional repositories as infrastructures for long-term preservation

Posté le 9 juin 2017 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Helena Francke, Jonas Gamalielsson, Björn Lundell

Introduction

The study describes the conditions for long-term preservation of the content of the institutional repositories of Swedish higher education institutions based on an investigation of how deposited files are managed with regards to file format and how representatives of the repositories describe the functions of the repositories.

Method

The findings are based on answers to a questionnaire completed by thirty-four institutional repository representatives (97% response rate).

Analysis

Questionnaire answers were analysed through descriptive statistics and qualitative coding. The concept of information infrastructures was used to analytically discuss repository work.

Results

Visibility and access to content were considered to be the most important functions of the repositories, but long-term preservation was also considered important for publications and student theses.

Whereas a majority of repositories had some form of guidelines for which file formats were accepted, very few considered whether or not file formats constitute open standards. This can have consequences for the long-term sustainability and access of the content deposited in the repositories.

Conclusion

The study contributes to the discussion about the sustainability of research publications and data in the repositories by pointing to the potential difficulties involved for long-term preservation and access when there is little focus on and awareness of open file formats.

URL : http://www.informationr.net/ir/22-2/paper757.html

Current Status of Chinese Open Access Institutional Repositories: A Case Study

Posté le 16 mai 2017 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : K. C. Das, Kunwar Singh

The present study mainly focuses on the current status of Chinese Open Access Institutional Repositories: A Case Study.The present study attempts to determine the current status of open access institutional repositories in China based on the four key constraints, i.e. number of IRs, types, subjects and contents and software used.

To fulfill the specified objectives, the Open access institutional repositories in China were identified by selecting the database of Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR) and the data were collected analysed for the necessary information.

The study highlights the current status of open access institutional repositories in China and its contribution to a global knowledge base.

URL : Current Status of Chinese Open Access Institutional Repositories: A Case Study

Making Visualization Work for Institutional Repositories: Information Visualization as a means to browse electronic theses and dissertations

Posté le 2 mai 2017 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Leila Belle Sterman, Susan Borda

INTRODUCTION

An attractive repository with clear, well-structured and accessible content can be a powerful recruitment and publicity tool for administrators, fundraisers, and others trying to bolster support for repositories.

Digitizing ETDs is a lengthy and often arduous process. Once that process is completed, it is often a victory that suffices. As a result, collections frequently receive no further treatment. We demonstrate the benefits of visualizing repository content.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

The goal of the project was to create an interactive visualization to make our newly digitized theses and dissertations more discoverable.

By leveraging the institutional organization of College, Department and Year of Graduation, we visualized data to help users understand ETD content as a whole and find specific items more easily.

BUILDING THE VISUALIZATION

The process begins with data cleanup involving extracting and normalizing repository metadata, then the data is processed and the Data-Driven Documents (D3) JavaScript library is used to generate the actual visualization.

Benefits of Visualizations to Users: The visualization allows for the sort of happenstance discovery of materials that are celebrated about shelf browsing and a way to compare the productivity of each college and department at our university. It also illustrates our institution’s changes in emphasis over time.

NEXT STEPS

Visualizations have vast potential for creating engaging user interfaces for digital library content. We would like to explore how people are using the visualization as we move forward with this process to visualize multiple collections.

URL : Making Visualization Work for Institutional Repositories: Information Visualization as a means to browse electronic theses and dissertations

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2140