[BOAI] Report on Open Repository Development in Developing and Transition countries is released

[Iryna Kuchma]

(This message is being sent to multiple lists; please excuse duplication)

This study was conducted with the cooperation of eIFL.net, the University of
Kansas Libraries, the DRIVER project and Key Perspectives Ltd. The aim was
to create an inventory of current digital repository activities in
developing and transition countries at both the infrastructure and services
level. This is the first attempt to collect such data about digital
repository activity in developing and transition countries and we hope this
will serve as a useful resource for promoting open access and repository
development in these regions. This report was produced in the framework of
the eIFL-OA advocacy program supported by Open Society Institute and the
Wellcome Trust.

Over the course of six months, 49 repositories from 20 countries on three
continents participated in this survey. The following countries are
represented: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Ghana, Hong
Kong, India, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Namibia, Poland, Russia,
Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

You can download the report and the data from the EIFL website:
http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/services/eifl-oa/docs/report-on-open or
from KU ScholarWorks: http://hdl.handle.net/1808/6393.

Thanks to all of you who participated in the survey!

Some of the findings of the survey are listed below:

    * Visibility, access, and preservation were the most important
motivations cited by participating institutions to establish a repository.
Other motivations included the need to evaluate researchers and departments,
and as a response to requests from faculty.

    * The responses show an increasing rate of growth of repositories over
the last several years, and indicate that these repositories are for the
most part very new services. The repositories at nearly one-fourth of the
participating institutions had been publicly accessible for less than a year
at the time of the survey, and over 60% had been accessible for less than
three years.

    * Libraries play a major role in advocating and maintaining
repositories. By far the majority of participating institutions (88%)
answered that the library actively advocated the establishment of a
repository. The Information Technology department was the second most
mentioned unit, cited by 28% of participating institutions. Other
departments mentioned include administration (18%), academic departments
(16%), and the research office (14%). In addition, 79% indicated that the
repository was supported by funds from the library’s operating budget.

    * Electronic theses and dissertations are the most common type of
material in the responding institutions' repositories. Other common material
includes full-text of research articles as peer-reviewed postprints,
journals published from the institution, and conference papers. Preprints
were far less common, as were audio and video.

    * 85% of the materials in the repositories of the participating
institutions are open access or publicly available.

    * About two-thirds of the participating institutions use some form of
mediated deposit in which staff members or librarians are directly involved
in the deposit of materials into the repository.

    * The majority of participating institutions (56%) stated that less than
25% of the researchers or faculty members at their institutions have
deposited material in the repository. For almost one third (29%) of
participating institutions the picture is a bit better--between 25 and 50%
of the researchers or faculty members at these institutions have deposited
material in the repository. 9% indicated that between 75-99% of the
researchers or faculty members and 4% indicated between 50-75%. One
institution indicated that 100% of the researchers or faculty members at
their institutions have deposited material in the repository (this
institution has an OA mandate).

    * Dspace is by far the most common software package, used by 57% of
participating institutions. 9% use EPrints and 2% use Fedora. 13% use
locally developed packages and 19% use other packages (including Nitya
Archive, Greenstone, dLibra (Poland), Socionet (Russia), and Digital
Commons).

    * The following services were listed as priorities further development
at an international scale: General search engines/gateways/portals (34%),
Preservation services (34%), Advisory services (Open Access advocacy) (30%),
Disciplinary/ thematic search engines/gateways/portals/repositories (27%),
Citation index services (27%), Usage statistics services (25%), Cataloguing
or metadata creation/ enhancement services (20%), Advisory services
(technical aspects) (18%), Personal services for the depositing scientists
(16%), Publishing services (14%), Research assessment/evaluation services
(11%), Printing-on-demand services (7%), Repository hosting services (5%).

    * The major challenge that the institutions faced in implementing,
promoting and running the repository was content recruitment (42% of
participating institutions). Other challenges included: Engendering faculty
awareness and engagement (50%); Securing adequate funding and other
resources (46%); Copyright issues (42%); Communicating with faculty about
the repository (41%); Integrating the repository into workflow and other
existing structures (35%); Staffing issues (31%).

Iryna Kuchma
Open Access program manager
EIFL

Brian Rosenblum
Scholarly Digital Initiatives Librarian
University of Kansas
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