Abstract
Purpose
Open-access repositories (OARs) are essential for openly disseminating intellectual knowledge on the internet and providing free access to it. The current study aims to evaluate the growth and development of OARs in the field of technology by investigating several characteristics such as coverage, OA policies, software type, content type, yearly growth, repository type and geographic contribution.
Design/methodology/approach
The directory of OARs acts as the source for data harvesting, which provides a quality-assured list of OARs across the globe.
Findings
The study found that 125 nations contributed a total of 4,045 repositories in the field of research, with the USA leading the list with the most repositories. Maximum repositories were operated by institutions having multidisciplinary approaches. The DSpace and Eprints were the preferred software types for repositories. The preferred upload content by contributors was “research articles” and “electronic thesis and dissertations”.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to the subject area technology as listed in OpenDOAR; therefore, the results may differ in other subject areas.
Practical implications
The work can benefit researchers across disciplines and, interested researchers can take this study as a base for evaluating online repositories. Moreover, policymakers and repository managers could also get benefitted from this study.
Originality/value
The study is the first of its kind, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to investigate the repositories of subject technology in the open-access platform.
Keywords
Citation
Wani, J.A., Sofi, T.A., Sofi, I.A. and Ganaie, S.A. (2024), "The status of open access repositories in the field of technology: insights from OpenDOAR", Information Discovery and Delivery, Vol. 52 No. 2, pp. 164-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-11-2022-0119
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited
Introduction
Open-access (OA) literature, as defined by Suber (2012), is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions”. OA is “the movement which is the worldwide effort to provide free online access to scientific and scholarly research literature, especially peer-reviewed journal articles and their preprints” (Suber, 2009). In recent years, OA initiatives became prominent across the globe, the history of which could be traced back to the Budapest OA Initiative supported by the Bethesda and Berlin declarations (Shivaram and Biradar, 2018). OA can be regarded as an important aspect of scholarly output that emphasizes making scientific content immediately, freely and easily available online. This objective can be fulfilled in two ways: Green OA and Gold OA (Oguche, 2018). Suber (2012) believed that OA can be achieved by opting either the green OA or the gold OA, where the former is linked with repositories while the latter is linked with journals. The ways through which OA funds can be accomplished include publishing the intellectual output in open-access journals or by depositing the work of a researcher in a repository, i.e. an author self-archives his/her scientific writing (Chan et al., 2009; Brainard, 2020). In green OA, scholars or publishers publish the scientific output in repositories from which the literature can be easily accessed, while a licensing agreement is associated with gold OA where journals are being paid for making research output immediately available to users.
Researchers believe that all types of initiatives about OA, especially in sharing scientific data, are shaping modes of scholarly communication to a new level. Such researchers are more inclined towards “open-access repositories” (OARs) because they believe that science communication could reach the whole community through the OARs. Creaser et al. (2010) opined that OARs can benefit the scholarly community in several ways with wider accessibility and greater impact on research. Further, institutional repositories (IRs) have become a vital component of this communication process giving wider opportunities for users to gain knowledge in diverse forms and formats (Gasparyan et al., 2019). Similarly, Nikos (2018) mentioned that OARs are an important platform for enhancing networking among different organizations and institutions. OARs play a crucial role in publicizing scholarly information freely on the internet and giving its access without any cost (Ghosh and Roy, 2021; Nayak and Parhi, 2021; Kumar and Kaur, 2020; Kruesi et al., 2019). In the year 2005, there was a breakthrough in the OARs, when the launch of OpenDOAR at the University of Nottingham occurred.
OpenDOAR is regarded as a reliable source because all the resources present in OpenDOAR have been carefully selected and checked by the experts, thus minimizing the chances that users will get any false or unreliable information (Nayak and Parhi, 2021; Dhanavandan, 2019). It provides a single base to all the countries around the globe to get registered and make their research contribution visible as well as accessible to all the users. Thus, encouraging the authors as well as the research community as their scientific output gets recognized at the global level (Dhanavandan, 2019). Suber (2006) strongly opines OpenDOAR and ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) are the two worthy sites for finding any OA repository. OpenDOAR having universal recognition is a reliable and trustworthy directory of OARs from many countries worldwide. Rafiq (2022) highlighted that the OA culture is escalating at a rapid pace across the globe, and DOAR showcases that a total of 5,688 digital repositories were known at the global level in May 2021. The repositories in OpenDOAR across the globe are increasing continuously, showing a positive attitude towards the OA moment. Therefore, the current study is an attempt to explore and evaluate the OARs in the field of technology at OpenDOAR.
Review of related literature
A plethora of literature is available on the theme of OARs and their sub-topics. It was not possible to mention all studies; therefore, efforts were made to highlight a few important studies here. Various studies examined the impact of OA on articles, and it was evident that articles with OA had greater reach and impact than those that were not OA (Piwowar et al., 2018; Antelman, 2004). While Schultz (2018), Robinson-Garcia et al. (2020) and Zhu (2017) revealed that the authors preferred to share the research findings in green OA. Similarly, Zhu (2017) studied the behaviour of various stakeholders from different academic institutes in the UK and revealed the majority of them were aware of the policies about OA and supported the idea of OA, knowing its benefits for making their scientific work more impactful. There are a good number of studies highlighting the growth and development of OARs across the globe. The studies showed that the developed nations are leading in the growth and development of OARs (Pinfield et al., 2014; Singh, 2016; Wani, et al., 2009; Zainab, 2013; Ibrahim and Beigh, 2019). Moreover, several studies have evaluated the technical and operational characteristics of the OARs, content type, repository categorization and software usage (Singh et al., 2020; Pinfield et al., 2014; Singh, 2016; Wani, et al., 2009; Zainab, 2013; Ibrahim and Beigh, 2019; Robinson-Garcia et al., 2020; Zhu, 2017; Ukwoma and Okafor, 2017). These studies showed that the most preferred software was DSpace and Eprints, further articles and electronic theses and dissertations were common content types in the OARs, and most OARs are institutional.
OARs are becoming more interested in facilitating OA for copyrighted materials. The institutions are establishing repositories to host their faculty's publications to enable OA to these publications as a way of exchanging and promoting their institution's published research (ACRL Research Planning, 2015). Academics prefer OA because it disseminates scientific studies more widely and generates higher usage statistics. Repositories, on the other hand, suffer problems related to copyright clearances and ownership of published publications. Copyright studies looked at how repositories attempted to strike a compromise between safeguarding holders' copyright and sharing information. Several of those studies incorporate digital archives, which complicates the findings because there is a mix of historical and archival resources (digital archives) and open-access publications in defining the sorts of IRs (Darby et al., 2008; Dawson and Yang, 2016). Moreover, it was evident from the literature that there are “subject-specific” OARs (Suber, 2012), which are open online collections of “working papers” or “manuscript copies” of published papers, specific to a particular discipline. Darby et al. (2008) looked at the interfaces between “subject repositories” and “institutional repositories”, whereas Xia (2008) compared the self-archiving behaviour of users in both “subject repositories” and “institutional repositories”. Numerous publications have highlighted the emergence of effective repositories, particularly the organizational structures that have enabled success (Parinov and Krichel, 2004; De Robbio and Katzmayr, 2009; Ginsparg, 2004; Kelly and Letnes, 2006). Adamick and Reznik-Zellen (2010) followed up on the previous literature analysis with empirical research on the top ten subject repositories, although little is known about the overwhelming bulk of smaller repositories. Researchers emphasized the necessity of repositories. The essential point is that OARs help to create a more equal and inclusive ecosystem by accommodating all researchers’ OA needs. They are crucial components of the national research infrastructure system, allowing seamless OA for a range of research outputs across the repository network. OARs serve as critical institutional instruments for tracking research outputs and assisting with both institutional and national scientific appraisal efforts. Furthermore, by linking published research and endorsement services (e.g. overlay journals) with repository content, OARs provide an alternative to academic publishing. OARs make research management outputs more visible (Hughes and Salathé, 2015; Pinfield et al., 2014; Fry et al., 2016; Creaser et al., 2010; Kistler et al., 2013; Shin, 2010; Baich, 2015; Kabir and Sheikh, 2023).
Research Objectives
The objectives framed for the study are:
to discover the country-wise contribution of OARs in the field of technology;
to find out the type of OAR;
to analyze the type of software used in the creation of OARs in the field of technology;
to examine the type of content archived by the repositories;
to gauge the Subject of OARs;
to examine the yearly growth of OARs in the field of technology; and
to investigate whether OARs in OpenDOAR follow any OA policy or not.
Scope and methodology
The scope of the study is limited to the repositories registered in OpenDOAR in the field of “Technology” only. The current study is an attempt to investigate the status of open-access repositories in the field of technology.
Step 1: Source selection – The Directory of open-access repositories (www.opendoar.org/) was used for data collection. The first step was selecting a repository from OpenDOAR, which was to save all the repositories in MS Excel because of the reason new repositories are being added to the platform. The list of all the repositories was collected from 30 September 2022 to 4 October 2022.
Step 2: Data harvesting – The advanced search strategy of OpenDOAR was used to retrieve the data for fulfilling the stated objectives. Among the different subject areas listed in it, the study limited its search to the field of “Technology” only. A total of 4,045 repositories were retrieved against the selected subject. The Advanced Search interface of OpenDOAR displays various options for searching different parameters of a repository, such as “Content-type”, “Software type” and “Repository type”. Hence, the advanced search parameters were combined one by one with other available parameters to retrieve the data. This data was gathered from 4 October 2022 to 5 October 2022.
Step 3: Analysis – However, to fulfil objectives 1, 5, 6 and 7, each repository was manually checked for required details from 5 October 2022 to 13 November 2022. All the gathered data was saved in MS Excel for further analysis and interpretation, and the results were drawn in the form of tables and charts.
Results
Country-wise contribution
IRs are digital collections that store and provide access to scholarly works, research data and other materials produced by institutions such as universities, research centres and government agencies (Marsh et al., 2017). Repositories serve as a vital means of preserving a nation’s scholarly output, research data and cultural heritage. By providing a permanent home for these materials, IRs ensure that future generations will have access to the knowledge and cultural artefacts produced by their predecessors (Hixson and Cracknell, 2007). Therefore, a total of 125 countries were identified and contributed to 4,045 OARs in the area of technology. The maximum number of repositories is contributed by the USA (600, 14.83%), followed by Japan (361, 8.92%), the UK (220, 5.44%) and Germany (207, 5.12%). Countries such as Turkey (162, 4.00%), Indonesia (146, 3.61%), Peru (138, 3.41%), Spain (126, 3.11%), Brazil (116, 2.87%), Italy (111, 2.74%) and France (110, 2.72%) also contribute a good number of repositories in the area of technology. Countries such as China, Poland, Colombia, Ukraine, Canada, Australia, Croatia and Portugal contribute very few repositories to the platform (93, 2.30%), (90, 2.22%), (87, 2.15%), (83, 2.05%), (70, 1.73%), (70, 1.73%), (69, 1.71%), (64, 1.58%) and (54, 1.33%), respectively. India was spotted at the 16th position in the list with only 74 (1.83%) repositories (Table 1). Repositories are vital for every nation because they promote the preservation, access and visibility of scholarly works and research data, while also facilitating collaboration and compliance with funding mandates (Marsh et al., 2017).
Type of open-access repository
There are several different types of repositories, each designed to serve a particular purpose or audience. Table 2 clearly shows that of the total 4,045 repositories, 93.25% were institutional. The repositories hosted by academic or research institutions and designed to store and provide access to scholarly works and research data produced by the institution’s faculty, students and staff are deemed IRs (Arlitsch and Grant, 2018). Similarly, 2.72% were “aggregating”, 2.27% were “disciplinary” and 1.76% of repositories were “governmental”. Aggregator repositories are digital platforms that aggregate content from various open-access repositories and make it searchable and accessible in one place.
Type of software used in the creation of open-access repositories
Open-access repositories are designed to be accessible and easy to use, and they are built using various types of software and architecture. OARs can be built using two primary types of software: open source and proprietary. Open-source software is freely available, and the source code is openly accessible, allowing developers to modify and improve the software (Quinn, 2022; Novak and Day, 2018). Examples of open-source repository software include DSpace, EPrints and Fedora. Proprietary software, on the other hand, is owned by a specific company or organization, and the source code is not publicly accessible (Quinn, 2022; Novak and Day, 2018). Examples of proprietary repository software include “Digital Commons” and “Islandora”. Table 3 depicts a total of 32 software types that are being used by countries for the development and management of OARs. DSpace takes first place in the list as it is being used in the creation of 1,770 (43.76%) repositories, accompanied by EPrints (465, 11.50%), while WEKO (289, 7.14%) and Digital Commons (201, 4.97%) are also used in quite good numbers. Opus (71, 1.76%), Islandora (70, 1.73%), Hal (69, 1.71%), Pure (64, 1.58%), CONTENTdm (52, 1.29%), Dlibra (48, 1.19%) and Fedora (45, 1.11%) have also opted for the creation of repositories although in a lesser number. Software such as Invenio (25, 0.62%), Greenstone (24, 0.59%), Diva-Portal (17, 0.30%), Digitool (14, 0.35%), Digibib (13, 0.33%), Drupal (13, 0.33%), DSpace CRIS (12, 0.13%)), MyCoRe (11, 0.27%), Samvera (11, 0.27%), Vital (11, 0.27%), Fez (9, 0.222%), Open Repository (9, 0.22%), Earmas (8, 0.20%), Omeka (7, 0.17%), Sci Elo (6, 0.15%), Cybertesis (5, 0.12%), Wildfire (5, 0.12%), XooNips (5, 0.12%) and Equella (3, 0.07%) are also used in developing a meagre number of repositories. Other software (468, 11.57%) and unspecified ones (225, 5.56%) are also being used in the creation of repositories. Most repositories have a front-end interface that allows users to search and access the content. The interface may include features such as advanced search options, browsing by subject and filtering by date or author. The back-end architecture typically consists of a database that stores the metadata and digital files of the content (Quinn, 2022; Novak and Day, 2018; Marsh et al., 2017; Hixson and Cracknell, 2007). In addition to the front-end and back-end architectures, OARs may also include middleware, which provides additional functionality and services, such as authentication and access control, metadata harvesting and interoperability with other systems (Quinn, 2022; Novak and Day, 2018). Middleware can also provide customization options for repositories, allowing institutions to tailor the repository to their specific needs.
Core content type
OARs can contain various types of content, including, scholarly articles; these can be preprints or post-prints of research papers, conference papers and other scholarly outputs (Marsh et al., 2017; Hixson and Cracknell, 2007). Theses and dissertations are electronic copies of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations commonly found in open-access repositories. Data sets are raw data, processed data and other research data that OARs can share with others. Multimedia content includes images, videos and audio recordings (Pinfield et al., 2014; Kuri and Singh, 2020). Software code and open-access repositories can also host software code for scientific applications, simulations and other research software (Marsh et al., 2017; Hixson and Cracknell, 2007). Educational resources and open-access repositories can also include teaching materials, such as lectures, lesson plans and course materials. Grey literature includes reports, working papers and other publications that are not formally published or peer-reviewed but are still of interest to researchers (Wani and Ganaie, 2022). Table 4 highlighted that journal articles (3,005, 22.13%) are the main content type in OARs in the field of “technology” followed by thesis and dissertations (2,745, 20.22%), books, chapters and sections (1,680, 12.37%). A satisfactory number of conference and workshop papers (1,632, 12.02%), reports and working papers (1,404, 10.34%) and special items (1,216, 8.96%) also form part of these repositories, while bibliographic references (649, 4.78%), learning objects (636, 4.68%), data sets (318, 2.34%), patents (187, 1.38%) and software (106, 0.78%) are meagre in number in these repositories. The significance of the content types in open-access repositories lies in their potential to enhance research, support education and facilitate knowledge-sharing and collaboration (Pinfield et al., 2014; Kuri and Singh, 2020; Tmava, 2022).
Subject category of open-access repositories
Subject categorization of open-access repositories is important for organizing research outputs and publications into different subject categories based on the subject matter. This helps users to discover and retrieve relevant research outputs and publications more easily (Hixson and Cracknell, 2007). The choice of subject categorization scheme depends on the type of research outputs and publications and the intended audience (Kuri and Singh, 2020). Figure 1 clearly shows that a maximum number of the OARs were associated with more than one subject area, hence falling into the “multidisciplinary” subject category (3,944, 97.50%). It was evident that only 2.50% of repositories were associated with a specific subject category.
Growth of open-access repositories in the field of technology
The growth of open-access repositories reflects a growing recognition of the importance of OA in research outputs for advancing knowledge and innovation. As more and more researchers adopt open-access practices, OARs will likely continue to play a key role in enabling the sharing and dissemination of research outputs in the future (Shivaram and Biradar, 2018). Similarly, Table 5 and Figure 2 indicate that OpenDOAR became operational in the year 2005 and initiatives were taken to register repositories in it. The same year saw the development of 63 repositories and their registration on the OA site. The highest number of repositories (1,058) was registered in the year 2019, followed by the years 2006 (355) and 2016 (240). A good number of repositories (234), (221), (218) and (214) were registered in the year 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2015, respectively. A moderate number of repositories were registered in the years 2013 (194), 2008 (180), 2012 (159), 2017 (150), 2021 (143) and 2020 (138). The least number of repositories (130), (124) and (105) were registered in the years 2007, 2014 and 2018, respectively. As for the year 2022 till November, 118 repositories have been added to OpenDOAR in the field of technology and the number is continuously increasing day by day.
Open-access policy
Policies are an important part of repositories as they set criteria for managing scientific literature. The OA policies of repositories are the guidelines or rules that govern how research outputs are made available in the repository (Pinfield et al., 2014; Kuri and Singh, 2020). The policies can vary depending on the repository and its objectives, but typically include “open-access mandate”, “copyright and licensing”, “embargo periods”, “types of content”, “metadata and standards” and “preservation and compliance monitoring” (Darby et al., 2008; Dawson and Yang, 2016). OpenDOAR identifies and lists five types of OA policies for guiding and providing clarity to stakeholders regarding the management of content in repositories. The policies are the metadata policy; data policy; content policy; submission policy and preservation policy. A total of 4,045 repositories were analyzed to gauge whether the repositories registered in OpenDOAR were following any of these OA policies or not. Figure 3 clearly shows that 3,523 (87.10%) of the total repositories are not following any of the open-access policies, while only 522 (12.90%) are following. Overall, OA policies of repositories are important in ensuring that research outputs are made openly accessible, promoting collaboration and knowledge-sharing and enhancing the impact of research (Arlitsch and Grant, 2018).
Discussion
OARs are a critical component of the movement towards OA to information. They provide a platform for researchers, academics and other authors to make their work freely available to the public, thereby increasing the visibility and impact of their research (Pinfield et al., 2014; Kuri and Singh, 2020). Open-access repositories increase the visibility of research and make it easier for people to find and access important work. This can lead to more citations and a wider audience for the research. Open-access repositories make research accessible to individuals who may not have access to expensive subscription-based journals, such as students and researchers in developing countries. Therefore, the current study explored the interoperability, accessibility and visibility characteristics of the OARs. It was observed that the USA was the leading country in terms of its contribution of OARs to OpenDOAR in the field of technology. Further, Japan has also been spotted as the top contributing country to the OpenDOAR. Similar results were revealed by the prior studies (Pinfield et al., 2014; Wani, 2019; Wani et al., 2019). The underlying scholarly communication culture that supported sharing and so created an environment in which rapid adoption of OA was possible is one of the likely explanations for the adaptation of OA projects (Xia, 2012). Also, policy developments have had an important influence. A mix of OA policy developments and funded activities by government-sponsored entities encouraging OA acceptance in general and repositories formation, in particular, has surely been crucial in facilitating the rise in repository numbers in the UK, Poland and Brazil (Pinfield et al., 2014).
The cost rises for journals and books have prompted many libraries and library associations to urge for OA to these resources. Furthermore, libraries are establishing IRs for their academic staff to contribute full-text publications, allowing them to be made accessible to their local communities and the world more swiftly. Similarly, the current study found that institutions are heavily involved in the production of OARs, which is consistent with earlier research (Kuri and Singh, 2020). IRs are becoming more interested in making protected materials available to the public. More and more institutions are establishing repositories to host their faculty’s publications to enable OA to these articles as a means of sharing and promoting their institution's scholarly work (ACRLResearch Planning, 2015). Moreover, OARs enable researchers to share their work and collaborate more easily with colleagues around the world.
The repositories are mostly based on free and open-source software because of ease of use and a simpler interface. The two widely opted software are DSpace and Eprints for the creation of repositories (Kuri and Singh, 2020; Pinfield et al., 2014). Similar findings were revealed by the current study. There could be various possible reasons that made this software prominent, such as an easy search interface, email updates and system-wide alerts, which allow a site-wide banner to proclaim scheduled downtime or maintenance and a basic media viewer that supports “captioning” for audio/video files. The results further showed that research articles were the main content type of the repositories registered in OpenDOAR, followed by “thesis and dissertation” (Table 4). The possible reason for the content type “research article” might be because of the OA policy adopted by the publishers. In contemporary publishing, culture publishers are providing an opportunity for authors to share their work in their IRs. This OA opportunity is availed through the green OA policy. Harnad et al. (2004, p. 310) define green OA as “publishing your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archiving it in an OA archive”. Green OA is the self-archiving of published papers or peer-reviewed articles in an electronic database before, after, or alongside their publication. The self-archiving of a manuscript in an IR instantaneously fulfils three roles that are essential to conventional journals and are critical to the scientific communication process, namely, “registration, awareness and archiving” (Picarra, 2015). The scholar could claim his or her work. By building the repository following OAI standards, the IRs will be discovered by search engines, and the content will be accessible to contemporaries. The institution would implement a long-term archiving strategy to ensure that its production would be visible to future generations for centuries (Prosser, 2004). Green OA was initially popularized in the UK. It was suggested that “higher education institutions” establish repositories, the establishment of a “network of interconnected institutional repositories” and the “research councils” enact regulations requiring researchers to deposit their scholarly output in repositories (green OA) (Picarra, 2015). Similarly, the USA favours the green OA publishing approach. President Barack Obama's administration implemented a policy in 2013 requiring taxpayer-funded research to be publicly available online within 12 months after its publication in a journal (Subbaraman, 2019). In addition, the “National Institutes of Health” in the USA has placed a maximum 12-month embargo to encourage “green OA” (National Institutes of Health, 2015).
The implementation of OA regulations has offered an opportunity for the establishment and growth of IRs that will consolidate faculty research outputs from thousands of scholarly publications into a single digital platform. Experts applaud IRs for their global visibility, promotion of academic communities’ intellectual contributions and impact on research and continuous professional development (Lee and Stvilia, 2017; Brush and Jiras, 2019). Similarly, it was evident from the results that there was a steady growth in the repositories in the technology subject domain represented by OpenDOAR (Figure 2 and Table 5). The study further highlighted that the maximum repositories show a multidisciplinary nature (Figure 1). Although such repositories are intended to collect information from scattered journal articles, other forms of research publications and grey literature, such as a dissertation, patents and non-peer-reviewed papers, can also be archived to offer a wider outlook on the host academic institution's purview of interests and accomplishments (Brush and Jiras, 2019). The same portal also hosts complete journal archives produced and maintained by the university. To avoid a violation, researchers and data curators who record scholarly items must consult the originating publisher’s copyright guidelines (Berquist, 2015). The archive, for its part, should provide services for continuous interoperability archiving and acquire electronic channels to ensure the authors’ discoverability (Baessa et al., 2015).
Policies related to OA are essential components of repositories. The current study revealed of maximum number of repositories lacking the OA policy statement on their homepages. It would be pertinent to mention that these OARs are following OA policies depending on the nature and hosting organization’s OA policies. Because of the expansion of OA, higher education and research institutions, which produce knowledge reflected in publications, are developing institutional policies to control and strengthen OA practises such as journal publications or deposits in online repositories for archiving. At the same time, these policies are epistemic governance tools in the sense that they convey knowledge-related values, conventions and perspectives that are used to establish influence and power over diverse stakeholders in academic and scientific information environments (Albornoz et al., 2018). Systematizing the information contained in institutional OA policies provides a fresh look at the conceptual understanding of OA perspectives and practices. Many funding agencies and institutions have OA policies that require researchers to make their work freely available to the public. OARs provide a platform for researchers to comply with these policies and ensure their work is accessible to all.
Open-access repositories provide a secure and stable platform for the preservation of research, ensuring that it will remain accessible for future generations. OARs can help researchers to secure funding by demonstrating the impact of their work and the importance of their research. Further, OARs play a crucial role in promoting OA in information and research and are essential for advancing knowledge and innovation in the academic and scientific communities (Zhang et al., 2022). The OA approach to research allows for more thorough peer review and enables researchers to build upon existing work more easily, leading to higher quality research. OARs provide a platform for researchers from different disciplines to access and build upon each other's work, promoting interdisciplinary research and collaboration. The OA to research results can lead to discoveries and innovations, as researchers build upon each other’s work and make connections between different areas of research. OARs provide a wealth of resources for students and educators, enabling them to access the latest research and use it in their teaching and learning. OARs can help to engage the public with research and promote a greater understanding of scientific and academic concepts, ultimately leading to a more informed and engaged society (Lappalainen and Narayanan, 2023; Perifanou and Economides, 2023).
Conclusion
To explain current developments, the intricate relationships between individual academics, their organizations and topic communities, their funders and governments and the contributions all of these parties contribute to repository development. OA initiatives in general, and specifically OA repositories, have the possibility of influencing scholarly practice. Throughout the last decade, there has been significant progress in this domain, with the establishment of a repository architecture capable of providing a vital function in scholarly communication. The following decade, however, is likely to reveal the degree to which these developments have a widespread and long-lasting impact on the scientific community. It is worthwhile to note that the subject area technology has significant visibility in OpenDOAR. There is no denial of the fact that OARs are growing at a greater pace and benefiting the scholarly community. The emerging economies do not receive as much support as developed nations; the prime contributors are the academic institutions and the developed nations that are highly supportive of the OARs, encouraging authors and publishers by providing such a platform where the scientific output gets acknowledged on a wider scale. Further, developed countries should join hands with developing countries, providing every sort of support for the development of OARs, to boost the OA movement in the real sense and practice the idea globally rather than being just a theory. Furthermore, there is a need to work on the limitations that act as barriers to the development and management of OARs. This will definitely impact the accessibility and visibility of scientific literature. The role of the OARs will include the facilitation of scholarly publishing to enable the widest dissemination of scholarly output.
Figures
Geographical distribution
| S. no. | Country | No. of repositories | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USA | 600 | 14.83 |
| 2 | Japan | 361 | 8.92 |
| 3 | UK | 220 | 5.44 |
| 4 | Germany | 207 | 5.12 |
| 5 | Turkey | 162 | 4.00 |
| 6 | Indonesia | 146 | 3.61 |
| 7 | Peru | 138 | 3.41 |
| 8 | Spain | 126 | 3.11 |
| 9 | Brazil | 116 | 2.87 |
| 10 | Italy | 111 | 2.74 |
| 11 | France | 110 | 2.72 |
| 12 | China | 93 | 2.30 |
| 13 | Poland | 90 | 2.22 |
| 14 | Colombia | 87 | 2.15 |
| 15 | Ukraine | 83 | 2.05 |
| 16 | India | 74 | 1.83 |
| 17 | Canada | 70 | 1.73 |
| 18 | Australia | 69 | 1.71 |
| 19 | Croatia | 64 | 1.58 |
| 20 | Portugal | 54 | 1.33 |
| 21 | Others | 1,064 | 26.30 |
| 4,045 | 100 |
Source: Table by authors
Category of OAR
| S. no. | Type of repository | No. | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Institutional | 3,772 | 93.25 |
| 2 | Aggregating | 110 | 2.72 |
| 3 | Disciplinary | 92 | 2.27 |
| 4 | Governmental | 71 | 1.76 |
| 4,045 | 100 |
Source: Table by authors
Software type
| S. no. | Software type | No. of times used | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dspace | 1,770 | 43.76 |
| 2 | Eprints | 465 | 11.50 |
| 3 | Weko | 289 | 7.14 |
| 4 | Digital Commons | 201 | 4.97 |
| 5 | Opus | 71 | 1.76 |
| 6 | Islandora | 70 | 1.73 |
| 7 | Hal | 69 | 1.71 |
| 8 | Pure | 64 | 1.58 |
| 9 | Contentdm | 52 | 1.29 |
| 10 | Dlibra | 48 | 1.19 |
| 11 | Fedora | 45 | 1.11 |
| 12 | Invenio | 25 | 0.62 |
| 13 | Greenstone | 24 | 0.59 |
| 14 | Diva-portal | 17 | 0.42 |
| 15 | Digi tool | 14 | 0.35 |
| 16 | Digibib | 13 | 0.32 |
| 17 | Drupal | 13 | 0.32 |
| 18 | Dspace-CRIS | 12 | 0.30 |
| 19 | Mycore | 11 | 0.27 |
| 20 | Samvera | 11 | 0.27 |
| 21 | vVtal | 11 | 0.27 |
| 22 | Fez | 9 | 0.22 |
| 23 | Open Repository | 9 | 0.22 |
| 24 | Earmas | 8 | 0.20 |
| 25 | Omeka | 7 | 0.17 |
| 26 | Scielo | 6 | 0.15 |
| 27 | Cybertesis | 5 | 0.12 |
| 28 | Wildfire | 5 | 0.12 |
| 29 | Xoonips | 5 | 0.12 |
| 30 | Equella | 3 | 0.07 |
| 31 | Other | 468 | 11.57 |
| 32 | Unspecified | 225 | 5.56 |
| 4,045 | 100 |
Source: Table by authors
Type of content
| S. no. | Content type | No. | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Journal articles | 3,005 | 22.13 |
| 2 | Thesis and dissertations | 2,745 | 20.22 |
| 3 | Books, chapters and sections | 1,680 | 12.37 |
| 4 | Conference and workshop papers | 1,632 | 12.02 |
| 5 | Reports and working papers | 1,404 | 10.34 |
| 6 | Other special items | 1,216 | 8.96 |
| 7 | Bibliographic references | 649 | 4.78 |
| 8 | Learning objects | 636 | 4.68 |
| 9 | Data sets | 318 | 2.34 |
| 10 | Patents | 187 | 1.38 |
| 11 | Software | 106 | 0.78 |
| 13,578 | 100 |
Source: Table by authors
Year of growth of OARs
| S. no. | Year | No. of repositories | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2005 | 63 | 1.56 |
| 2 | 2006 | 355 | 8.78 |
| 3 | 2007 | 130 | 3.21 |
| 4 | 2008 | 180 | 4.45 |
| 5 | 2009 | 218 | 5.39 |
| 6 | 2010 | 221 | 5.46 |
| 7 | 2011 | 234 | 5.78 |
| 8 | 2012 | 159 | 3.93 |
| 9 | 2013 | 194 | 4.80 |
| 10 | 2014 | 124 | 3.07 |
| 11 | 2015 | 215 | 5.32 |
| 12 | 2016 | 240 | 5.93 |
| 13 | 2017 | 150 | 3.71 |
| 14 | 2018 | 105 | 2.60 |
| 15 | 2019 | 1,058 | 26.16 |
| 16 | 2020 | 138 | 3.41 |
| 17 | 2021 | 143 | 3.54 |
| 18 | 2022 | 118 | 2.92 |
| 4,045 | 100 |
Source: Table by authors
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Acknowledgements
Authors are highly obliged to the anonymous reviewers for reviewing the paper.