Content growth of institutional repositories in South India: a status report
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-02-2018-0018 |
| Pages | 547-565 |
| Date | 05 November 2018 |
| Published date | 05 November 2018 |
| Author | Shajitha C.,Abdul Majeed K.C. |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information in society,Information literacy,Library & information services |
Content growth of institutional
repositories in South India:
a status report
Shajitha C. and Abdul Majeed K.C.
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this study wasto evaluate the content growth of institutional repositories (IR)in
South India and analyse the type-wisegrowth of items available in these IRs and also discuss the traits and
trends exposedby them.
Design/methodology/approach –With the help of Registry of Open Access Repositoriesand Directory
of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR),39 repositories were located in south India. From these, Personal
websites,the IRs that are currently not working and the repositories used for journalarchiving were excluded.
A total of 22 operationalIRs at 21 institutions were identified for the study.Within a 15 month period, the data
were collectedfrom the 22 IRs twice for monitoring content growth.
Findings –The content of nearly all IRs have grown over the 15 month period, and the overall content
growth rate was 7.82 per cent. Journal articles were the important content type of IRs, while thesis and
conference papers were the next common. Moreover, item monographs exhibited the highest growth rate.
Other categories, conference proceedings, and conference papers also exhibited a high growth rate. The
present study revealedthat Indian repositories were activelyengaged in data curation activities, depositinga
wide variety of items in their respective IRs. Overall, South Indian repositoriesexhibited a slow growth rate
and tended to become inactive. Most South Indian Universitieshad not constituted the IRs, which led to the
dominanceof English language material in these IRs.
Research limitations/implications –The study wasconducted only in South Indian IRs.
Originality/value –This is the first study in India, attemptingto determine the type-wise growth of items
in IRs.
Keywords Institutional repository, Open access, Categorisation of item types, Content growth,
Institutional repository software, South India
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The growth of institutional repositories (IRs) varies greatly among the world's nations.
According to Directory of Open Access Repositories (April 2018) and International
Association of Universities (2018), 19.05 per cent (389) institutions in the USA and 27.32
per cent (209) institutions in Japan possessrepositories. The rate is really on the higher side
when it comes to the institutions in the UK (76.86 per cent [196]) and Spain (88.64 per cent
[117]). Germany with half of the institutions (46.18 per cent [163]) and France with 28.18
per cent (104) institutions establishedrepositories is in the middle path. Italy has achieved a
very high 96.93 per cent deployment rate of repositories with 95 institutions. The
contribution to the deployment of IRs in developingnations is evidently very low compared
to developed nations,and many reasons behind this low representationexist.
The economic and socio-political environment of developing countries has a considerable
influence on the formation and growth of IR. The initial cost required to establish IRs in
developing countries would not as low as in developed countries, which already possess a well-
Repositories in
South India
547
Received17 February 2018
Revised23 April 2018
3September 2018
Accepted23 September 2018
GlobalKnowledge, Memory and
Communication
Vol.67 No. 8/9, 2018
pp. 547-565
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9342
DOI 10.1108/GKMC-02-2018-0018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2514-9342.htm
established state-of-the-art information and communications technology infrastructure.
Developing countries lack this infrastructure, and require huge financial resources for their
establishment (Christian, 2008). For example, a combination of inadequate computer hardware,
low bandwidth, and power outages are harmful to the smooth operation of IRs in Zimbabwe
(Nyambi and Maynard, 2012). Moreover, Dlamini and Snyman (2017) deduced that inadequate
funding, lack of support from institutional management, and lack of IR awareness at the
institutional management level represent the primary obstacles to IR development in African
nations. For China, factors including government policies, and lack of closed-loop control for
government S&T funds slow the growth of IRs (Zhong, 2009). However, in India, intellectual
property issues, lack of leadership, and poor infrastructure are the main barriers for IRs
(Fernandez, 2006). Babu et al. (2012) further elaborated on the challenges faced by IRs in India,
which include financing IR infrastructure, IR policy and state-of-the-art infrastructure,
multilingualism and local content development, research and development (R&D), monitoring
and policy initiatives, synergism, open access mandates and self-archiving. The many
obstacles mentioned here disrupting not only the maintenance but also the establishment of
IRs. This obstacle is primarily caused by poor financing, which slows the growth of IRs in
developing countries and is correlated with a lack of infrastructure. Within these limits,
developing nations have also informed their presence in the deployment of IRs, proving that the
attitude of such nations towards IRs is congruent with the global perspective.
When reviewing the number of IRs in Asia, India stands in the second position behind
Japan. As of April 2018, Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) listed 79
Indian repositories, while Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) listed 114.
However, it is very low while comparing the number of higher education institutions in
India. India is a nation with 799 Universities, 39,701 colleges and 11,923 stand-alone
institutions (Ministryof Human Resource Development, 2016). Even though major academic
Institutions in India have established IRs and developed some metadata harvesting tools.
The best examples of these include the Cross-archiveSearch Services for Indian Repositories
(CASSIR) and the SJPI cross-journal metadata harvesters of the National Centre for Science
Information- Indian Institute of Science (NCSI- IISc), Search Digital Libraries of
Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC) and the Search Engine for
Engineering Digital Repositories of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. A special
session on open access washeld at 93rd Indian Science Congress in January 2006, whichput
forward a proposal of "Optimal National Open Access Policy”(Harnad, 2006). As per the
University Grants Commission (UGC, 2009;UGC, 2016) regulations of India (minimum
standard and procedure for award of MPhil/PhD Degree), researchers were directed to
submit the electronic version of theses in Universities to facilitate open access to Indian
theses and dissertations. As part of this regulation, the INFLIBNET (Information and
Library Network Centre) was assigned to construct the digital repository of Indian theses
and dissertations, and ShodhGanga was launched in May 2010. In 2009, the Council of
Scientific and IndustrialResearch (CSIR) directed its 37 laboratories to establish open access
repositories (Arunachalam and Mathan, 2011). The Government of India, the Ministry of
Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science
and Technology (2014) approved an open access policy to facilitate impact of research
(Singh, 2016). Ministry of Human Resource Development, under its national mission for
education through information and communication technology had entrusted IIT,
Kharagpur to host, coordinate and establish the National Digital Library (NDL). The NDL
would harvest metadata and contents from all the institutional digital repositories, other
digital library initiatives, and National Mission on Education through Information and
Communication Technology projects in the NDL server; thus, full-text e-content can be
GKMC
67,8/9
548
To continue reading
Request your trial