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1 – 10 of over 4000Lauren Fralinger and Jonathan Bull
In an educational world with increasing internationalization, digitization, assessment and financial justification, US institutions, especially academic libraries, must justify…
Abstract
Purpose
In an educational world with increasing internationalization, digitization, assessment and financial justification, US institutions, especially academic libraries, must justify each new project. Institutional Repositories (IRs) are no exception. The authors attempt to identify factors that might affect the international usage of US IRs as part of assessment efforts to determine an IR's return‐on‐investment.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was disseminated to IR administrators asking for demographic information, international usage counts for website hits and downloads, and any internationalization efforts connected to the IR in order to determine any influencing factors on an IR's international usage.
Findings
While many IRs reported various rates of international usage, the largest group of respondents did not report an international usage rate for both page hits and downloads, despite overwhelmingly expressing an importance of international traffic to their IR and parent institution.
Research limitations/implications
It is not clear if this non‐reporting of international usage could be due to ignorance, apathy, or lack of technological support on the part of the IR administrators.
Practical implications
Determining international usage as a part of an IR assessment might be problematic or even impossible for many US IRs.
Originality/value
This study suggests that many IR administrators either do not know, do not care, and/or cannot record international usage data for their respective IRs, which could hinder determining an international return‐on‐investment for the IR.
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Shajitha C. and Abdul Majeed K.C.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the institutional repositories (IRs) in South India in terms of policy and procedures, technology, content and contributors, promotion and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the institutional repositories (IRs) in South India in terms of policy and procedures, technology, content and contributors, promotion and assessment and personnel.
Design/methodology/approach
A voluntary survey was conducted to assess IRs in South India. The questionnaire was designed according to the study framework, which comprises 64 indicators across five areas: policy and procedures, technology, content and contributors, promotion and assessment and personnel. Furthermore, all of the 23 IRs identified were monitored over one year period (from February 2018 to January 2019) to analyse the content growth.
Findings
The Research Archive of Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad was found to provide more services to users than other South Indian IRs and it was the sole IR to embed a metadata field for author identification. Almost all the IRs were actively engaged in promotion and assessment activities. IR performance in the technology area was substandard in comparison with performance in the policy and procedures and promotion and assessment areas. For all South Indian IRs, content growth was low.
Originality/value
Very few in-depth studies have evaluated South Indian IRs across all five of the areas listed above and in recent years, no such comprehensive study has been conducted in India at all.
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JoAnne Sparks, Linda O'Brien, Joanna Richardson, Malcolm Wolski, Sanja Tadic and Joanne Morris
The purpose of this paper is to report on “turning a new page” (TNP), a business improvement initiative undertaken by Scholarly Information & Research (SIR). The aim is to embed…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on “turning a new page” (TNP), a business improvement initiative undertaken by Scholarly Information & Research (SIR). The aim is to embed innovation and integrate e‐research and library services. SIR is part of the Information Services (INS) division at Griffith University, one of the top research universities in Australia. SIR provides library services, publication support and eResearch services to over 43,000 students and staff at five campuses and online.
Design/methodology/approach
TNP combines methods from best practices around continuous improvement, change management and business planning to achieve better alignment operationally and to prioritise potential improvements to services. The focus is on services required in three to five years for the “new generation” of users who will need them.
Findings
Existing services were unevenly delivered and resources unevenly distributed. A key initial step is restructuring to collocate similar capabilities and redistribute resources, and provides a framework for developing future capacity. The integrated staffing approach nurtures innovation and skills development.
Originality/value
Integrating e‐research services with library services to this extent has not been achieved in an Australian context before. The combination of methods applied and the progress achieved to date illustrates the value of the approach and may be relevant for other research‐intensive universities.
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The aim of this study is to assess the metadata element sets of electronic theses and dissertations that are currently used at Canadian academic institutional repositories, and to…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to assess the metadata element sets of electronic theses and dissertations that are currently used at Canadian academic institutional repositories, and to discuss issues related to variations and inconsistencies in Dublin Core data used by participating repositories.
Design/methodology/approach
The formats and usage patterns of metadata elements at ten participating institutional repositories are identified and analyzed. Additionally, metadata element variations are grouped by different types.
Findings
Current metadata elements have a significant level of inconsistency and variation.
Research limitations/implications
The observations drawn from this study are limited to Canadian cases only. However, the results provide insights into developing a metadata framework for institutional repositories in other countries.
Originality/value
This study examines empirical data collected from data providers among Canadian institutional repositories. The result of this study may be beneficial to the achievement of interoperability across institutional repositories and to the development of a standardized application profile for Canadian institutional repositories.
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This study investigated the development of institutional repositories (IRs) at doctoral institutions, identifying factors that influence development and best practices using a…
Abstract
This study investigated the development of institutional repositories (IRs) at doctoral institutions, identifying factors that influence development and best practices using a comparative case study analysis approach to gather and analyze data. The development of a repository is one of the more complex projects that librarians may undertake. While many librarians have managed large information system projects, IR projects involve a larger stakeholder group and require support from technical services, public services, and administration to succeed. A significant increase in the development of repositories is expected with technology and process improvements for digital collection development so further study is warranted. Both institutional and subject repositories were examined for the case studies. Best practices and recommendations for future developers, such as early involvement of stakeholder groups and the need to educate both librarians and teaching faculty about open access collections, are also discussed. This study contributes to a more informed understanding of the development of IRs and identifies a model framework for future IR developers. The best practices framework incorporates the processes from the case study sites and includes additional factors identified from the case study interviews. Key to the framework is the inclusion of stakeholder groups on campus and assessment measures. While the case studies focused on doctoral institutions, the framework can be adapted to any size institution.
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Rocio Serrano-Vicente, Remedios Melero and Ernest Abadal
The purpose of this paper is to provide, through a set of indicators, an overview of the way in which Spanish institutional repositories are run and the services they offer their…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide, through a set of indicators, an overview of the way in which Spanish institutional repositories are run and the services they offer their respective institutions and other users. The selected descriptors are based on aspects related to technology, procedures, content, marketing and the personnel responsible for managing repositories.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to establish the indicators, a thorough review of the literature was carried out to identify existing indicators that are used to assess repositories. These were divided into five categories (technology, procedures, content, marketing and personnel) with a total of 48 components. An online survey was conducted with the repositories managers of 66 Spanish research institutions in order to verify the degree of fulfilment of the selected indicators.
Findings
The survey received forty-six responses, which represented a response rate of 69 per cent. Of these, 44 came from universities and two from research centres. In total, 65 per cent of the repositories have the capacity to import data from and export data to other university systems, mainly Current Research Information System (32 per cent). Most repositories have mechanisms for the large-scale import and export of metadata and digital objects (83 per cent). The use of altmetrics in repositories is widespread (44 per cent). Authors and librarians deposit most frequently (37 and 32 per cent, respectively), in spite of the fact that 44 per cent do not have full-time staff working in the repository. In more than 80 per cent of the repositories, between 90 and 100 per cent of the deposits are full-text documents. With respect to the tools used to promote the repository within the institution, these are primarily face-to-face training sessions (82 per cent), followed by support materials such as manuals and help pages (65 per cent). The academic authorities encourage open access among researchers in 56 per cent of cases, a significant element in repository marketing.
Originality/value
This work proposes a model based on five dimensions and 48 indicators to assess institutional repositories. This approach has been applied to Spanish institutional repositories to provide up-to-date information about their management procedures and promotional methods and the services they offer authors and the university community. This overview of Spanish repositories has provided an insight into the way in which repositories have evolved in recent years and allowed potential improvements to be identified based on the most advanced repositories. This model can also be exported to assess institutional repositories in other countries.
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Usman Ahmed Adam and Kiran Kaur
This study aims to validate a proposed conceptual model for the implementation of sustainable institutional repositories (IRs) in Nigeria.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to validate a proposed conceptual model for the implementation of sustainable institutional repositories (IRs) in Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative approach shaped the survey research design. This study used structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis to evaluate the proposed model. The population of the study comprises 117 librarians, information technology staff and researchers knowledgeable about IR implementation status across 14 public universities in Nigeria. The data was collected using an online survey. The Smart-PLS v3.3 software was used to facilitate the analysis.
Findings
The findings indicate that the nine identified factors of the IR sustainability model have a significant influence on the implementation of sustainable IRs. This signified that the model has adequately depicted the relationship between the implementation of sustainable IRs and the identified factors.
Originality/value
This study provides an integrated synthesis of factors that influence the implementation of sustainable IRs. This study also presents the first-ever empirically validated model for sustainable IRs. The findings of this study addressed the challenge of implementing sustainable IRs and institutionalized the idea of IRs’ sustainability assessment.
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Sadiat Adetoro Salau, Georgina U. Oyedum, F.P. Abifarin, S.J. Udoudoh and Jibril A. Alhassan
The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) initiatives in the repositories of federal government-owned universities…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) initiatives in the repositories of federal government-owned universities due to the poor global visibility of ETDs from Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach
An explanatory case study empirical research method was adopted for the study. Using an adapted methodology of Ghosh (2009) and multiple data gathering techniques, data was collected based on the three domains of the network of excellence on digital libraries (DELOS) digital library reference model.
Findings
The ETD initiatives in repositories of Nigerian federal universities have not made remarkable progress as digital libraries based on policy, content and system architecture. The specificity of ETDs is not clearly stated in the policies where available. The repositories housing the ETDs are also not compliant with the open archive initiative-protocol for metadata harvesting framework.
Research limitations/implications
The study focussed on ETD initiatives in federal government-owned universities. Although the findings of the study are relevant to other institutions in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa. It cannot be used as a basis for the generalisation based on other performance metrics.
Practical implications
This research study concluded that electronic theses and dissertations in Nigerian institutional repositories are not well managed for effective service delivery and long-term accessibility. The ill-management of the ETD initiatives is the reason for the poor global visibility and accessibility of these research output from this part of Africa.
Originality/value
The study assessed ETD initiatives using constructs from a theoretical framework.
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The present study aims to investigate various issues concerning the management of institutional repositories (IRs) developed in India.
Abstract
Purpose
The present study aims to investigate various issues concerning the management of institutional repositories (IRs) developed in India.
Design/methodology/approach
The survey method was used. The data collection tool was a web questionnaire, which was created with the help of software provided by surveymonkey.com. The questionnaire was e‐mailed to the entire population i.e. all IRs identified in India.
Findings
It was observed that 79 per cent of the institutions had used the DSpace IR software package. The respondents considered end‐user interface to be the top‐ranking IR‐system feature. It was found that all IRs supported text (HTML, Postscript, PDF, Spreadsheet etc) file formats. Half of the respondents marked bitstream copying as a long‐term preservation strategy. Almost all institutional repositories were OAI‐PMH compliant.
Research limitations/implications
Only Indian IRs were studied and the findings were compared with other studies.
Originality/value
This is the first detailed study focusing on the management aspects of IRs. The present study has identified the existence of 16 functional IRs, some of which were not registered in any of the directories such as ROAR or Open DOAR.
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Laksmi Laksmi, Muhammad Fadly Suhendra, Shamila Mohamed Shuhidan and Umanto Umanto
This study aims to identify the readiness of institutional repositories in Indonesia to implement digital humanities (DH) data curation. Data curation is a method of managing…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify the readiness of institutional repositories in Indonesia to implement digital humanities (DH) data curation. Data curation is a method of managing research data that maintains the data’s accuracy and makes it available for reuse. It requires controlled data management.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a qualitative approach. Data collection was carried out through a focus group discussion in September–October 2022, interviews and document analysis. The informants came from four institutions in Indonesia.
Findings
The findings reveal that the national research repository has implemented data curation, albeit not optimally. Within the case study, one of the university repositories diligently curates its humanities data and has established networks extending to various ASEAN countries. Both the national archive repository and the other university repository have implemented rudimentary data curation practices but have not prioritized them. In conclusion, the readiness of the national research repository and the university repository stand at the high-capacity stage, while the national archive repository and the other university repository are at the established and early stages of data curation, respectively.
Research limitations/implications
This study examined only four repositories due to time constraints. Nonetheless, the four institutions were able to provide a comprehensive picture of their readiness for DH data curation management.
Practical implications
This study provides insight into strategies for developing DH data curation activities in institutional repositories. It also highlights the need for professional development for curators so they can devise and implement stronger ownership policies and data privacy to support a data-driven research agenda.
Originality/value
This study describes the preparations that must be considered by institutional repositories in the development of DH data curation activities.
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