Basudeb Adhikary
Librarian, Netaji Mahavidyalaya,
Hooghly, WB
&
Sarmistha Adhikary
Librarian
AKPC Mahavidyalaya, Hooghly, WB



The major way to make knowledge free is
Open Access Initiatives.
Open Access Initiatives has two major
manifestations, firstly Open Access Journals
and secondly Open Access Institutional
Repositories.
This presentation aims to find out the situation
of the Institutional Repositories in India.





It is digital in nature.
Centralized collection of intellectual output of
any organization.
Apart from intellectual output, administrative
documents and teaching materials coming out
of the normal academic life may be a part of IR.
IR may be single organization based or
multiple organization based.
Open to members (Full access) or All (to a
certain extent or full access) depending upon
repository policy.



Proper management of intellectual resources in
IR.
Consistent metadata structure for similar
objects in IR.
Proper dissemination of resources, long term
preservation are the other areas of concern.





Establishment of IR is beneficial to all
stakeholders of the organization. The benefits
may be four pronged.
Benefits to the AUTHORS (contributors).
Benefits to the INSTITUTION (sponsoring
body).
Benefits to the USERS (beneficiary).
Benefits to the LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CENTERS
(facilitators).



Instead of scattered in different databases, all
the intellectual output
(created in his
institutional life!) of an individual are kept in a
well organized way in a single place.
Submission to IR increases visibility, thereby
inviting and increasing citation of an article.
Well preserved and permanently accessible to
all.




Increase the global visibility of the intellectual
output of the institution.
Act as an advertising tool for the institute.
When administrative records are submitted in
the IR, organizational history is well preserved.
A knowledge bank of the institute can be
created by accumulating all the works of the
intellectual capability.




User can browse, search the documents
submitted to an IR freely.
In some cases users can access the full text, in
some can access partially.
In case of partial access, users can avail
‘Request a copy’ service.
Gray literature like teaching materials,
unpublished documents can be accessed from
the IR.




A librarian feels embarrassed when he can not
satisfy the user’s need.
In today’s library world the budget is shrinking
and document
(print & Online) price is
increasing. The embarrassment continues.
Online journals and institutional repositories
can save the day for him.
Libraries can assume greater role of reaching
global
clientele
through
institutional
repositories.





As per Registry of Open Access Repositories
(ROAR), there are 65 repositories in India.
As per Open Directory of Open Access
Repositories (OpenDOAR), there are 51
repositories in India.
India stands second in Asia after Japan (89).
(ROAR information)
India stands third after Japan (135) and Taiwan
(58). (OpenDOAR information)
We choose 60 IRs for our study.




Among 60 chosen IRs, 15 cannot be opened
during the study.
Indian Institute of Science Open Access
repository is the first IR in India started in 2004.
Among 45 IRs, 3 contain exclusively electronic
thesis and dissertation. (Vidyanidhi, etd@IISc,
Mahatma Gandhi University Thesis Online)
The largest repository is Indian Academy of
Science Publication of Fellows (39,300
documents)




The smallest IR is WHO India Health
Repository. (19 documents)
21 IR s are multi disciplinary in nature.
18 IR s deal exclusively on science technology
and allied subjects.
2 IR s contain document regarding library and
Information Science and 1 repository each for
Developmental studies and Literature.



2 IR s namely Vidya Prasarak Mandal and eGyankosh contains exclusively with teaching
material.
Regarding repository software, 11 are using
Eprints software, 33 are using DSpace software
and only 1 is using Nitya software.
Among 45 repositories, 41 repositories allows
‘Staff only’ submission. Other 4 repositories
allow authors not associated with institute to
submit document to the repository.




Among 45 IR s consulted, 4 have not provided
clear submission policy
Regarding accessing the documents, all the
repositories provide browsing and searching
facility to its users irrespective of affiliation to
the organization.
5 institutional repositories do not allow
outsiders to access full text of the documents.
33 repositories allow outside users full / partial
access to the full text of documents with or
without registration.



8 repositories have not any stated access policy
in their web sites.
World ranking of 1222 repositories are done by
www.webometrics.info .
Only 18 Indian institutional repository featured
in this ranking eprints@iisc being at the 106th
position in ranking.




Among 60 repositories studied, 15 can not be
accessed, they may be available in intranet or
LAN. This is contrary to open access initiative.
Universities feature in the list of IR rarely in
comparison to research institutes.
IR on social science or humanities subjects are
rare to find.
Only 18 IR get their place among 1222
repositories globally ranked is not a fair
picture.




The development of IR s in India is fast and
many institutes are taking up initiatives to set
up them.
UGC
released
‘Regulations
2005’
for
submission of metadata and doctoral thesis in
electronic format, so that Electronic Thesis and
dissertation repository can be made easily.
The prospect of Indian IR s are bright.
Libraries can hope now to serve their clientele
in more better fashion.