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The purpose of the study is to investigate the digital preservation practices in institutional repositories (IRs) in Africa.

Data were collected from the IRs developed in university libraries in Africa, and it was done in two phases. The phases are website investigation to identify the university libraries in Africa that have developed IR and online questionnaire.

Results from the study showed that the majority of IRs in Africa used DSpace software to manage their digital contents, and more than half of the IRs engage in information migration. The study also revealed that the majority of the responding institutions provide long-term digital preservation in their IR. Interestingly, the majority of the IRs has developed digital preservation policy to guide the implementation of digital preservation for IR contents. Finally, the majority of the respondents indicated that they do not have long-term funding and lack the necessary technical staff with required skills to handle and manage the IR.

Because of language barriers, data were collected from only universities in English speaking countries in Africa.

The findings of this study will make librarians in universities in Africa and other developing countries understand the key issues relating to digital preservation and longevity.

The findings of this study will inform information professionals, librarians in developing countries that are planning to create IRs and provide long-term digital preservation of electronic resources in their institution.

This paper aims to carry out a literature review on the implementation of digital preservation policies, strategies and actions by institutional repositories. The objective is to identify, out of the published experiences, at which level they are fulfilling the function of ensuring the long-term availability of the deposited materials.

Using a systematic literature review methodology, a total of 21 articles from international refereed journals published between 2009 and 2020 are reviewed.

The research production on this subject is very limited. The scarce number of published articles proves that the interest of repository managers has been focused on issues other than to assure the long-term availability of the assets they store. The literature review has not found clear evidence about how institutional repositories are implementing digital preservation. It is particularly striking the lack of works focused on the situation in European countries. More field studies are needed. They would allow to extract conclusions and produce best practices to help managers to improve preservation strategies.

This study has shown that one of the main functions of repositories is not being dealt with as promised by repository managers. More work in this area is needed. In particular, it is necessary for a study at the European level to gather detailed data that will allow to draw a portrait of the current situation, extract conclusions and produce best practices to help managers to improve or develop preservation strategies.