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The paper aims to focus on the current state of open access (OA) initiatives in Zimbabwean universities. The paper specifically reports the initiatives at Zimbabwean universities regarding institutional repositories that promote OA and other digital OA collections.

A qualitative research methodology was adopted. Questionnaires were used as the primary data collection method for this research. The research sought to address the following specific areas: the state of institutional repositories and open access in Zimbabwe, the discoverability of content, open access policies and mandates, the benefits of open access in Zimbabwe, and future plans for institutional OA. A total of eight out of 12 universities responded to the questionnaire. The data provided by the universities involved in the research were summarised to give a general picture of the open access landscape in Zimbabwe.

The current initiatives in the universities involved in this survey indicate that most universities in Zimbabwe are going to have institutional repositories that promote open access to information. Most institutions in Zimbabwe are already working on putting open access policies in place in a bid to promote open access.

The research will shed more light on the status quo of open access initiatives in Zimbabwe, particularly with regards to institutional repositories, open access policies and open access mandates.

This study aims to highlight the many distinguishing characteristics of open-access repositories that archive “Patents” in the Directory of Open-Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provided by Asian nations.

The OpenDOAR was chosen as a data collection tool that provides a quality-assured list of repositories indexed globally. The data was extracted on 28 March 2023.

The study found that only eight Asian countries contributed to open-access repositories on OpenDOAR, with China being the highest contributor. These countries mainly focused on institutional repositories, primarily using DSpace and English as the main language interface. Web 2.0 tools, especially RSS and Atom, were commonly used, along with some presence of social media platforms on the sites, although to a lesser extent. While many repositories followed the OAI-PMH protocol, a considerable portion did not adopt open-access policies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that brings to light the different features of repositories archiving one of the important content types, i.e. “Patents” in the OpenDOAR by Asian countries.

This paper aims to bring together information on whether any evidence exists of a commercial conflict between the creation of digital archives at research institutions and by key subject centres of excellence, and the business of journal publishing.

Relevant publications, including articles published in refereed books and journals, as well as informal commentaries on listservs, blogs and wikis, were analysed to determine whether there is any evidence of a commercial relationship.

Most of the published comments are highly subjective and anecdotal – there is a significant emotional overtone to many of the views expressed. There is precious little hard evidence currently available to support or debunk the idea that a commercial conflict exists between repositories and journal subscriptions. The situation is made more difficult by the many technological, sociological and administrative changes that are taking place in parallel to the establishment of repositories.

Separating the key drivers and their impact is a major strategic challenge facing all stakeholders in the scholarly communication industry in future.

This is an important area which requires close monitoring – the possible threat that the established journal publishing system could be eroded away by a new “free” scholarly information system needs attention. One significant study in this area is being undertaken by the PEER group, funded by the European Commission with hard evidence being collected by UCL's CIBER research group. The results from this impartial investigation will be very welcome.

The paper shows that relationship between repositories and journal subscriptions is vague.

Access to patent-related information is facilitated in large part by repositories of patents. Additionally, patent repositories support transparency and knowledge exchange, both of which can spark new alliances and collaborations. In addition to serving as a source of inspiration for future inventions, they allow companies, researchers and inventors to look up current patents and prevent infringement. Globally, the scientific and academic communities are becoming increasingly interested in open-access repositories. Countries throughout the world have kept up their repositories because of their significance. A directory of open access repositories (OpenDOAR) is a reliable source with minimally inaccurate or dubious content, having been meticulously chosen and validated. It acts as a global registration hub, enabling the visibility and accessibility of research contributions. Hence, this study aims to look into the current status of open-access repositories for archiving “Patents”, at the global level in OpenDOAR by analysing the different characteristic features of repositories.

The advanced search strategy of the directory of open-access repositories (www.opendoar.org/) is used to extract the data. The data extraction process was carried out on 28th March 2023. The study limited its search to “Patents” only, among the different content types listed in it. A total of 253 repositories were retrieved that contained the selected content type. However, the advanced search feature was combined one by one with other available parameters to retrieve the data. The gathered data was saved in MS Excel for further analysis. Moreover, the open access policies, open archives initiative protocol for metadata harvesting (OAI-PMH) and language interface of repositories were manually looked up from each repository/record information. To present the findings, charts and tables were used to visualize the gathered data effectively.

The study shows that repositories have increased over the years, with the highest number established in 2022. The UK has emerged as the most prominent country contributing to the development of repositories for archiving patents. The majority of the repositories are institutional, and DSpace is the most commonly used software for their creation. While Web 2.0 tools are not widely used, however, a significant number of repositories have incorporated RSS feeds, Atom and social media. Open access policies play a vital role in managing the content archived in the repositories, and only a small percentage of the repositories were found to be following them. However, the majority of the repositories have shown OAI-PMH compliance. English is the most commonly preferred interface language by repositories for archiving patents. These findings suggest that there is still significant room for improvement in the development and management of repositories, and adherence to open-access policies could play a crucial role in ensuring their sustainability and usefulness in the future.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the study is the first of its type that examines the global landscape of open-access patent repositories.

This paper aims to uncover the central purposes of institutional repositories, how developments are being affected by policies and researcher behaviour and also what services and approaches are appropriate in supporting repositories from those partners involved in scholarly communication with a particular focus on services that support the publication of research.

The research reviews the literature and current practices within higher education with regard to the core purposes of institutional repositories, the possible causes of low population of repositories in some institutions and subject disciplines, how this is being addressed and likely future developments. A qualitative survey using semi-structured interviews explores current best practices and tests the specific research questions that emerged from the literature review.

The rate at which institutional repositories have grown in number has been very fast in recent years, but the population of repositories with research has been relatively slow. The research identified a number of reasons as to why the population of repositories was likely to accelerate in the future and have a more significant impact on scholarly communication. The main catalysts are: strengthening of national and funder policies that serve to both mandate open access (green or gold) and raise awareness of open access amongst faculty; the alignment of repositories with current research information systems within universities; and the development of metadata and open archives initiative harvesting that will improve discoverability and usage data.

As many of the issues around the development of repositories centre on the attitudes of faculty, it would also provide an interesting extension to the research to understand their views of the role of institutional repositories, too.

The study presents a number of possible new ways of working by both information professionals and publishers to improve scholarly communication through the inclusion of research within institutional repositories and how perceived barriers could be overcome.

The study provides guidance on how the communication of scholarly research could be improved and reach a wider audience. This, in turn, will benefit researchers, corporate organisations and the public at large.

The paper provides a review of current best practices in managing institutional repositories and identifies new ways of addressing some of the perceived barriers to populating repositories and the benefits for each stakeholder in the scholarly communication process.

Surveying authors at doctoral-granting institutions of higher education in Portugal, the authors in this paper aim to seek to determine the extent to which Portuguese researchers prefer that their work appears in open access journals or open access repositories resulting in improved access to quality, peer-reviewed scientific information and faster scientific and technological advances. The authors also seek to gauge Portuguese author's familiarity with open access, the importance they attach to open access when choosing a publication outlet, and to determine their preferences for achieving open access.

The methodology adopted in this research is the case study. The case study intends to understand a complex social phenomenon through an in-depth study holistically. In May 2020, the authors distributed a survey to faculty in all academic ranks at 14 Portuguese higher education institutions to learn the extent to which Portuguese authors currently make their research openly available, ascertain their awareness of open access, their support of the European Union (EU) open access goal and their preferences for achieving open access.

Researchers at Portuguese universities overwhelmingly are aware of arguments in favor of open access and believe that open access benefits researchers in their fields. Portuguese researchers regularly publish in open access journals and deposit their papers in institutional or disciplinary repositories.

16.7% of 740 potential respondents completed the survey. The relatively low response rate prevents extrapolations from being made to the universe. The study was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, which, due to the disruption created in all sectors, made data collection complex and delayed its subsequent treatment.

Similar studies have been conducted at individual universities and in particular disciplines to determine the degree to which their faculty authors are aware of open access, its benefits, and preferences for achieving it. A similar study of Bulgarian university authors was conducted in 2018. No previous study of Portuguese authors at institutions of higher education has been conducted. The results will be useful to Portuguese institutions of higher education and academic libraries to establish and revise open access outreach and implementation services that may be helpful to their faculty in meeting EU open access and funder open access requirements.

Given that repositories were proposed as one of the routes to open access (OA), this study sought to establish the achievements universities in East Africa had attained in initiating institutional repositories (IRs), the challenges in providing OA and strategies for the way forward.

Data were collected through literature searches, using the internet, journal databases and university websites in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for information about OA and IRs in East Africa. Some of the findings were based on the author’s PhD “The management and accessibility of OA IRs in selected universities in East Africa”, which used face-to-face interviews with six librarians and self-administered questionnaires responded to by 183 researchers at Kenyatta University, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences and Makerere University.

Universities in East Africa were still in the intermediate stages of embracing OA, and only 40 libraries out of 145 universities had implemented IRs. However, most of the repositories had less than 1,000 items, with this challenge attributed to the absence of institutional and government/funder mandates that affected the collection/provision of OA, in addition to the lack of awareness of IRs among researchers.

The value in this research was establishing the extent of IR initiatives in universities in East Africa and their contribution to OA, which is regarded as more visible and accessible to scholars and government personnel who could leverage the information for further development in the region.

The study aims to shed light on the current state of “Dataset repositories” indexed in Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).

From each repository/record information, the Open-Access Policies, Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), year of creation and the number of data sets archived in the repositories were manually searched, documented and analyzed.

Developed countries like the United Kingdom and the USA are primarily involved in the development of institutional open-access repositories comprising significant components of OpenDOAR. The most extensively used software is DSpace. Most data set archives are OAI-PMH compliant but do not follow open-access rules. The study also highlights the sites’ embrace of Web 2.0 capabilities and discovers really simple syndication feeds and Atom integration. The use of social media has made its presence known. Furthermore, the study concludes that the number of data sets kept in repositories is insufficient, although the expansion of such repositories has been consistent over the years.

The work has the potential to benefit both researchers in general and policymakers in particular. Scholars interested in research data, data sharing and data reuse can learn about the present state of repositories that preserve data sets in OpenDOAR. At the same time, policymakers can develop recommendations and policies to assist in the construction and maintenance of repositories for data sets.

According to the literature, there have been numerous studies on open-access repositories and OpenDOAR internationally, but no research has focused on repositories preserving content-type data sets. As a result, the study attempts to uncover various characteristics of OpenDOAR Data set repositories.

Open access repository is an essential element of an organization's strategy for enhancing the visibility and accessibility of its intellectual output to a global audience. Owing to its importance, the study aims to explore the current status of open access repositories in India and China by analyzing the different characteristic features of repositories.

The data for the study is collected from OpenDoar which is labeled as a quality assured repository directory across the globe. The country-wise contribution of Asian repositories is extracted from OpenDoar using various filtration options available in the repository. Further, the URL of every Indian and Chinese repository was manually accessed to gather the following metadata: Repository Type, Software Usage, Repository Interface Language, Year of Development, Subject Coverage, Content Coverage, and the utilization of Web 2.0 tools by repositories.

The findings of the study highlights that among the Asian countries, India is at 4th rank while China is at 5th rank in terms of repository count. The study depicts that India has shown more promising growth than China.  However, both the countries mainly focused on institutional repositories while disciplinary, aggregated, and governmental repositories are very few in number, therefore building such repositories is the need of an hour. Dspace as the preferred software and English as a dominant interface language occupy the prominent places in the repositories of both countries. Moreover, the repositories of both countries have embraced web 2.0 tools like RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom with little presence of social media tools.

The study has limitations, and results should be interpreted with caution. The comparison between the two countries is based on only one data source, i.e. OpenDoar. However, there is a possibility that future studies can take various repository directories as a data source that will give a clear picture of comparison.

The study can be beneficial to the policymakers and the administrators of these two regions as it will provide them a vivid picture of the diffrent characteristic features of their repositories so that they can formulate better policies that will be helpful to foster green open access.

This paper aims to examine the grey literature archiving pattern at open-access repositories with special reference to Indian open-access repositories.

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) was used to collect data from different document types archived by open-access repositories across the world. Data were collected by advanced search and browse features available at the BASE on document types, the number of repositories by country wise and Indian academic and research repositories. Data were tabulated using MS Excel for further analysis.

Findings indicated that open-access repositories across the world are primarily archiving reviewed literature. Grey literature is archived more at European and North American repositories compared to rest of the world. Reports, theses, dissertations and data sets are the major grey document types archived. In India, a significant contributor to the BASE index with 146 open-access sources, reviewed literature is the largest archived document types, and grey literature is above world average due to the presence of theses and dissertations at repositories of academic institutions.

Grey literature is considered as valuable sources of information for research and development. The study enables to get insights about the amount of grey content archived at open-access repositories. These findings can further be used to investigate the reasons/technology limitations for the lesser volume of grey content in repositories. Furthermore, this study helps to better understand the grey literature archiving pattern and need for corrective measures based on the success stories of repositories of Europe and North America.