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Explore the present situation of Institutional Repositories in India, their benefits, management, and usage. Learn about the importance of Open Access Initiatives for knowledge dissemination and preservation.
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Institutional Repositories in India – Present Situation Basudeb Adhikary Librarian, Netaji Mahavidyalaya, Hooghly, WB & Sarmistha Adhikary Librarian AKPC Mahavidyalaya, Hooghly, WB
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;Where knowledge is free …..”Kabi Guru Rabindranath Tagore • The major way to make knowledge free is Open Access Initiatives. • Open Access Initiatives has two major manifestations, firstly Open Access Journals and secondly Open Access Institutional Repositories. • This presentation aims to find out the situation of the Institutional Repositories in India.
Institutional Repository – What? • It is digital in nature. • Centralized collection of intellectual output of any organization. • Apart from intellectual output, administrative documents and teaching materials coming out of the normal academic life may be a part of IR. • IR may be single organization based or multiple organization based. • Open to members (Full access) or All (to a certain extent or full access) depending upon repository policy.
Institutional Repository – What? (Contd.) • Proper management of intellectual resources in IR. • Consistent metadata structure for similar objects in IR. • Proper dissemination of resources, long term preservation are the other areas of concern.
Institutional Repositories – why? • Establishment of IR is beneficial to all stakeholders of the organization. The benefits may be four pronged. • Benefits to the AUTHORS (contributors). • Benefits to the INSTITUTION (sponsoring body). • Benefits to the USERS (beneficiary). • Benefits to the LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CENTERS (facilitators).
Benefits to the AUTHORS • Instead of scattered in different databases, all the intellectual output (created in his institutional life!) of an individual are kept in a well organized way in a single place. • Submission to IR increases visibility, thereby inviting and increasing citation of an article. • Well preserved and permanently accessible to all.
Benefits to the INSTITUTION • Increase the global visibility of the intellectual output of the institution. • Act as an advertising tool for the institute. • When administrative records are submitted in the IR, organizational history is well preserved. • A knowledge bank of the institute can be created by accumulating all the works of the intellectual capability.
Benefits to the USERS • User can browse, search the documents submitted to an IR freely. • In some cases users can access the full text, in some can access partially. • In case of partial access, users can avail ‘Request a copy’ service. • Gray literature like teaching materials, unpublished documents can be accessed from the IR.
Benefits to the LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CENTERS • A librarian feels embarrassed when he can not satisfy the user’s need. • In today’s library world the budget is shrinking and document (print & Online) price is increasing. The embarrassment continues. • Online journals and institutional repositories can save the day for him. • Libraries can assume greater role of reaching global clientele through institutional repositories.
INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES IN INDIA • As per Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), there are 65 repositories in India. • As per Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), there are 51 repositories in India. • India stands second in Asia after Japan (89). (ROAR information) • India stands third after Japan (135) and Taiwan (58). (OpenDOAR information) • We choose 60 IRs for our study.
Observations of the Study • Among 60 chosen IRs, 15 cannot be opened during the study. • Indian Institute of Science Open Access repository is the first IR in India started in 2004. • Among 45 IRs, 3 contain exclusively electronic thesis and dissertation. (Vidyanidhi, etd@IISc, Mahatma Gandhi University Thesis Online) • The largest repository is Indian Academy of Science Publication of Fellows (39,300 documents)
Observations of the Study • The smallest IR is WHO India Health Repository. (19 documents) • 21 IR s are multi disciplinary in nature. • 18 IR s deal exclusively on science technology and allied subjects. • 2 IR s contain document regarding library and Information Science and 1 repository each for Developmental studies and Literature.
Observations of the Study • 2 IR s namely Vidya Prasarak Mandal and e-Gyankosh contains exclusively with teaching material. • Regarding repository software, 11 are using Eprints software, 33 are using DSpace software and only 1 is using Nitya software. • Among 45 repositories, 41 repositories allows ‘Staff only’ submission. Other 4 repositories allow authors not associated with institute to submit document to the repository.
Observations of the Study • Among 45 IR s consulted, 4 have not provided clear submission policy • Regarding accessing the documents, all the repositories provide browsing and searching facility to its users irrespective of affiliation to the organization. • 5 institutional repositories do not allow outsiders to access full text of the documents. • 33 repositories allow outside users full / partial access to the full text of documents with or without registration.
Observations of the Study • 8 repositories have not any stated access policy in their web sites. • World ranking of 1222 repositories are done by www.webometrics.info . • Only 18 Indian institutional repository featured in this ranking eprints@iisc being at the 106th position in ranking.
Conclusion • Among 60 repositories studied, 15 can not be accessed, they may be available in intranet or LAN. This is contrary to open access initiative. • Universities feature in the list of IR rarely in comparison to research institutes. • IR on social science or humanities subjects are rare to find. • Only 18 IR get their place among 1222 repositories globally ranked is not a fair picture.
Conclusion • The development of IR s in India is fast and many institutes are taking up initiatives to set up them. • UGC released ‘Regulations 2005’ for submission of metadata and doctoral thesis in electronic format, so that Electronic Thesis and dissertation repository can be made easily. • The prospect of Indian IR s are bright. • Libraries can hope now to serve their clientele in more better fashion.
