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The purpose of this paper is to examine open access practices using an anthropological view of emics and etics.

An emic‐etic distinction has been theorized in anthropological research for decades. Its insider and outsider views are adopted here to provide greater understanding of open access development. The visions of various groups of academics, particularly faculty scholars and librarians, are explored to identify their different positions on open access involvement as well as the impact of those positions on open access practices.

This analysis reveals that new models of scholarly communication need to cope with existing systems and become sustainable only when the thoughts and behaviors of insiders have been fully understood by outsiders and appropriate strategies have been taken on in practice.

A theoretical framework was introduced to understand the practices of open access repositories and journal publishing.

This study aims to assess open access (OA) repositories in the field of the health and medicine (H&M) available in the Directory of the Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) by analysing their various facets like geographical distribution, language diversity, collection size, content types, operational status, interoperability, updating policy and software used for content management.

To achieve the objectives of the study, the OpenDOAR was selected as a source for identifying the H&M repositories. The required data were manually collected from 1 to 30 April 2014 and analysed using various quantitative techniques to reveal the findings.

The results reveal that the OpenDOAR lists 254 repositories in the field of the H&M contributed by the 62 countries of the world, topped by the USA (15.4 per cent), followed by Japan (7.9 per cent) and the UK (7.5 per cent). The majority of the repositories are institutional (187, 73.6 per cent) in nature, having less than 5,000 items (161, 63.4 per cent) in the collection and mostly consisting of articles (76.0 per cent), theses (49.6 per cent), unpublished documents (33.1 per cent) and books (31.9 per cent). The linguistic assessment shows that the majority of the H&M repositories accept content written in English language (71.3 per cent), followed by Spanish (16.1 per cent) and Japanese (7.5 per cent). The updating policy of these repositories is not up to the mark, as only 67.0 per cent of the H&M repositories have been updated from 2008-2012, but the majority are still operational (91.7 per cent) and are compatible (67.3 per cent) with the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). About 30 software brands, both commercial and open source, have been used by administrators for creating these repositories and managing their content. DSpace is the most popular software used by 88 (34.7 per cent) repositories, followed by EPrints (43, 16.9 per cent) and Digital Commons (18, 7.1 per cent).

The scope of this study is limited to the health and medical repositories listed in OpenDOAR, and hence the generalisation is to be cautioned.

This study is useful for library and information professionals and health and medical professionals across the globe.

This study is the first attempt to analyse the health and medical repositories in OA sites.

This paper aims to report on the findings of the second phase of the Behavioural strand of the EC‐funded PEER project (http://www.peerproject.eu/). The paper seeks to explore authors' and readers' behaviours in relation to authors' peer‐reviewed accepted manuscripts in open access repositories.

The research was undertaken using a mixed‐method approach, involving the distribution of a survey by the 12 participating publishers to their authors in selected journal titles and a participatory workshop with European researchers from selected disciplinary areas.

Researchers' attitudes towards versions of published journal articles made open access via open access repositories may vary depending on whether researchers report behaviours from the perspective of an author or a reader. The research found that disciplinary cultures, norms and traditions shape authors' self‐archiving behaviour and readers' use of those versions of journal articles held in repositories.

One of the limitations of the research is that it was impossible for the research team to gauge the representativeness of the survey compared to the actual disciplinary distribution of the population of EU researchers, as such population information is not available in an aggregated and consistent format.

The PEER Observatory is an unprecedented large‐scale collaboration between publishers, researchers and repositories to investigate the effects of self‐archiving at European level. The paper provides a disciplinary reading of the findings and augments the understanding of how disciplinary culture and norms shape authors' and readers' behaviours in relation to self‐archiving.

This study aims to investigate the use of Sokoine University of Agriculture Institutional Repository (SUAIR) among academic staff at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Science (CVBMS). Specifically, the study looked at awareness of, attitude, self-archiving and challenges the academic staff face when using SUAIR.

The study used survey method. The data were collected using self-administered questionnaire with the results analysed using descriptive statistics.

The study found that although there was more than one source of raising awareness on SUAIR, the university’s library, the internet and meetings were the major sources. Majority of the respondents were not aware of how to deposit their scholarly output in the institutional repository. As a result, the majority of academic staff had never deposited their scholarly work in SUAIR. Generally, the respondents had a positive attitude towards using SUAIR. Apart from lack of skills and knowledge on how to deposit research outputs, the study established that lack of time, fear of plagiarism and lack of awareness of existence of the SUAIR were significant barriers to the effective utilisation of SUAIR.

This is the first time such a study has been undertaken focussing on the use, awareness and attitude of SUAIR in Tanzania. As such, the study findings can be used to assess the attitude of academic staff at Sokoine University of Agriculture and other universities in Tanzania and Sub-Saharan Africa with similar operational characteristics.

This study investigates differences and commonalities in data production, sharing and reuse across the widest range of disciplines yet and identifies types of improvements needed to promote data sharing and reuse.

The first authors of randomly selected publications from 2018 to 2019 in 20 Scopus disciplines were surveyed for their beliefs and experiences about data sharing and reuse.

From the 3,257 survey responses, data sharing and reuse are still increasing but not ubiquitous in any subject area and are more common among experienced researchers. Researchers with previous data reuse experience were more likely to share data than others. Types of data produced and systematic online data sharing varied substantially between subject areas. Although the use of institutional and journal-supported repositories for sharing data is increasing, personal websites are still frequently used. Combining multiple existing datasets to answer new research questions was the most common use. Proper documentation, openness and information on the usability of data continue to be important when searching for existing datasets. However, researchers in most disciplines struggled to find datasets to reuse. Researchers' feedback suggested 23 recommendations to promote data sharing and reuse, including improved data access and usability, formal data citations, new search features and cultural and policy-related disciplinary changes to increase awareness and acceptance.

This study is the first to explore data sharing and reuse practices across the full range of academic discipline types. It expands and updates previous data sharing surveys and suggests new areas of improvement in terms of policy, guidance and training programs.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2021-0423.

This paper aims to propose a set of quantitative statistical indicators for measuring the scientific relevance of research groups and researchers, based on high-impact open-access digital production repositories.

An action research (AR) methodology is proposed in which research is associated with the practice; research informs practice and practice is responsible for informing research in a cooperative way. AR is divided into five phases, beginning with the definition of the problematic scenario and an analysis of the state of the art and ending with conducting tests and publishing the results.

The proposed indicators were used to characterise group and individual output in a major public university in south-eastern Mexico. University campuses hosting a large number of high-impact research groups. These indicators were very useful in generating information that confirmed specific assumptions about the scientific production of the university.

The data used here were retrieved from Scopus and open access national repository of Mexico. It would be possible to use other data sources to calculate these indicators.

The system used to implement the proposed indicators is independent of any particular technological tool and is based on standards for metadata description and exchange, thus facilitating the easy integration of new elements for evaluation.

Many organisations evaluate researchers according to specific criteria, one of which is the prestige of journals. Although the guidelines differ between evaluation bodies, relevance is measured based on elements that can be adapted and where some have greater weight than others, including the prestige of the journal, the degree of collaboration with other researchers and individual production, etc. The proposed indicators can be used by various entities to evaluate researchers and research groups. Each country has its own organisations that are responsible for evaluation, using various criteria based on the impact of the publications.

The proposed indicators assess based on the importance of the types of publications and the degree of collaborations. However, they can be adapted to other similar scenarios.

This paper proposes explaining institutional repositories (IRs) and open access, discussing the relationship of open access to IRs, and examining the possible roles of reference librarians in IRs.

Key IR and open access concepts are clarified and critiqued. New organizational roles for reference libraries are suggested that build on their current functions.

The IR concept is defined, and IRs are shown to be different from scholars' personal web sites, academic department/unit archives, institutional e‐print archives, and disciplinary archives. Open access is defined and examined. While the vision of open access is clear, the implementation of the vision is less pure. Open access and IRs are not synonyms: IRs are best seen as an enabling technology for open access. Reference librarians must play a key role in IRs, and ten potential IR support activities for them are identified.

This paper orients reference librarians, library administrators, and others to IRs and open access, providing a context for understanding how reference librarians' jobs may be transformed by the emergence of IRs.

Print theses and dissertations have regularly been submitted together with complementary material, such as maps, tables, speech samples, photos or videos, in various formats and on different supports. In the digital environment of open repositories and open data, these research results could become a rich source of research results and data sets, for reuse and other exploitation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

After introducing electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) into the context of eScience, the paper investigates some aspects that impact the availability and openness of data sets and other supplemental files related to ETD (system architecture, metadata and data retrieval, legal aspects).

These items are part of the so-called “small data” of eScience, with a wide range of contents and formats. Their heterogeneity and their link to ETD need specific approaches to data curation and management, with specific metadata and identifiers and with specific services, workflows and systems. One size may not fit for all but it seems appropriate to separate text and data files. Regarding copyright and licensing, data sets must be evaluated carefully but should not be processed and disseminated under the same conditions as the related PhD theses. Some examples are presented.

The paper concludes with recommendations for further investigation and development to foster open access to research results produced along with PhD theses.

ETDs are an important part of the content of open repositories. Yet, their potential as a gateway to underlying research results has not really been explored so far.

The purpose of this paper is to disseminate information about the IFLA pre‐conference in Chania, Crete, Greece on the subject of open access in libraries.

Report on visit.

The main focus of the meeting was open access. Much information was shared.

This is an original work with some quoted material.

To provide an overview of the growing international movement of librarians, faculty members, and researchers who are working together to develop new methods of scholarly communication, including Open Access (OA) journals, digital e‐print archives, and institutional repositories, and to press for public access to federally funded research.

Key elements which have created pressures for change in the scholarly communication system are reviewed: the development and expansion of the Internet and networked technologies, and rapidly increasing journal costs due to consolidation, pricing structures and title aggregating in the commercial journal publishing industry. Effects of these pressures on libraries, citing Bowdoin College as an illustrative case, and examples of OA and affordably priced journal publishing models and OA principles and infrastructure are presented.

The OA movement has gained momentum and appears to be meeting with some success, with worldwide efforts to make federally funded research available to taxpayers and the largest science, technology and medicine journal publishers revisiting pricing structures. It is predicted that commercial journals, OA journals and digital repositories will continue to co‐exist as information resources for the scholarly community for the foreseeable future.

This is not an exhaustive history, but rather a review of movement highlights, written by a steering committee member of SPARC, a major scholarly communication movement stakeholder.

A useful overview for librarians and researchers unfamiliar with the movement who wish to educate local faculty members about the implications for their publishing and professional activities, as well as for commercial publishers and scholarly presses interested in learning more about the movement.