Institutional Repositories: An Effective
Scholarly Communication Channel
Poornima Narayana
Deputy Head,
Information Center for Aerospace Science & Technology
National Aerospace Laboratories
Bangalore –560017 India
Presented at National Symposium on “Open Access and
Building Institutional Repositories” 21st-23rd January 2009
National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, India
Principles and Strategies for the Reform
of Scholarly Communication






The broadest possible access to published research
and other scholarly writings
Increased control by scholars and the academy
over the system of scholarly publishing
Fair and reasonable prices for scholarly
information
Competitive markets for scholarly communication
A diversified publishing industry
Open access to scholarship
Source: ACRL, 2003
Principles and Strategies for the Reform
of Scholarly Communication ……






Innovations in publishing that reduce distribution
costs, speed delivery, and extend access to scholarly
research
Quality assurance in publishing through peer review
Fair use of copyrighted information for educational
and research purposes
Extension of public domain information
Preservation of scholarly information for long-term
future use
The right to privacy in the use of scholarly
information
Source: ACRL, 2003
Publication Channels
 Journals
 Technical Reports
 Conference Proceedings
 House Magazines
 Institutional Repositories
 E-print Archives
 Institutional Websites
 …….
What is Open Access

User’s aspect
Its free availability on the public Internet,
permitting any users to read, download, copy,
distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of
these articles,
crawl them for indexing,
pass them as data to software, or use them for
any other lawful purpose,
without financial, legal, or technical barriers
other than those inseparable from gaining access
the Internet
itself.Initiative, 2002
Source: to
Budapest
Open Access
What is Open Access
 Author’s
aspect
The only constraint on reproduction and
distribution, and the only role for
copyright in this domain, should be given
to authors control over the integrity of
their work and the right to be properly
acknowledged and cited.
Source: Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002
Open access increases impact
Nature, vol. 411, No. 6837 (2001) p. 521
Open Access Channels
- Refereed free electronic journals,
- Research-area-specific archive
(e-print) servers,
- Institutional repositories of individual
universities/institutions and
- Self-posting/archiving on authors'
home pages.
Indian Open Access Journals
Sl.
No
.
1.
Publisher
Number of
Titles
Indian Academy of Sciences
(IAS)
11
Indian National Science
Academy (INSA)
4
Indian Medlars Center of NIC
(MedInd)
39
4.
Medknow Publications
45
5.
Indian journals.com
12
6.
Kamala-Raj Enterprises
9
2.
3.
Indian OA Journals






International Open Access Day on 14 October
2008
National Institute of Science Communication And
Information
two journals of NISCAIR [ CSIR India ] Indian Journal of Chemistry - Section A and
Indian Journal of Biochemistry & Biophysics in
Open Access mode .
NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository [NOPR]
[ http://nopr.niscair.res.in ].
What is an IR

An IR is a service that a Research Organization
offers to its community for the management and
dissemination of research materials created by the
community members
 Currently used by leading academic and research
institutions worldwide for providing improved
access to their research publications
Institutional Repositories
Definition:
 An Institutional repository is an Organization based set of services
which the organization offers to the members of its community for
the management and dissemination of digital materials created by
the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an
organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital
materials, including long-term preservation, where appropriate, as
well as organization and access or distribution” (Clifford Lynch
2003)

“Digital archives of intellectual products created by the faculty, staff
and students of an institution or group of institutions accessible to
end users both within and outside the institution.”
Institutional Repositories

Institutionally based

Scholarly material in digital formats

Cumulative and perpetual

Open and interoperable
– But not necessarily free!
IR Users

Senior administration
 Graduate students
 Retiring professors
 University research documents
 Institutes and Centres
 Your own organization
Why an IR?
•
Halving the double dip
•
Providing outlets for monographs and other specialty publications
•
Ensuring persistent access to information
•
Better representation of scholarship created within the institution
•
Stake or further leadership claim in a specific subject area
•
For consortia, display the depth and breadth of members’
intellectual output
Why Institutional
Repositories?

For the Individual
– Provide a central archive of their work
– Increase the dissemination and impact of their research
– Acts as a full CV

For the Institution
– Increases visibility and prestige
– Acts as an advertisement to funding sources, potential new faculty
and students, etc.

For Society
– Provide access to the world’s research
– Ensures long-term preservation of institutes’ academic output
Why Establish an IR?
 Institutional
Benefits
– Stewardship of scholarly output
– Efficiencies through centralization
– Showcase
– Proactive response to scholarly
communication crisis/open access
movement
Why Establish an IR?
 Individual Benefits
– Wider distribution
– Showcase
– Safekeeping
– Lowers technology barrier
– Time
– Persistent URLs
Type of Research Material in an IR

Published Research Material
Ex: Journal articles, Book chapters, Conference
papers
Unpublished Research Material
Ex: preprints, working papers,
Thesis/dissertations, technical reports,
progress/status reports, committee reports
presentations, teaching materials, audio/video
clips
Supporting Research material
Ex: Data sheets, models, blue prints
An Institutional Repository can
provide






A complement to existing Scholarly Communication models
A complement to other digital collections (dynamic connections
between “texts”)
Redundancy of scholarship (NELLCO & RePEc)
Collocation for a scholar’s work (Researcher Page)
Greater access to grey literature
Institutional stewardship & preservation (Are data providers or
aggregators as committed long-term as an institution’s library?)
Core Features
 Digital
content
 Community-driven & focused
 Institutionally supported
 Durable & permanent
 Accessible content
Core Functionality
 Material
submission
 Metadata application
 Access control
 Discovery support
 Distribution
 Preservation
How does IR work

Research material is hosted and managed on an
Institutional Repository server, using appropriate
IR software
 Accessible on the organizational LAN (intranet) +
Internet/private network
 Scientists use a web browser to submit (deposit)
research material and also search the repository
 Through OAI inter-operability protocol, a central
search service ‘Harvests” metadata from
individual IR’s, builds a cross-index and provides
single point cross-repository search service
IR Technology

IR software (Open Source/Commercial)
 OAI-PMH harvesting protocol/software
(Free)
 Intel/Pentium servers for IR
 Linux/Red Hat OS, MySQL/PostGress
DBMS, Apache/Tomcat web server,
Perl/Java (Free)
Standards
•Metadata Standards
–Dublin Core, SCORM
•Character Encoding standards
–Unicode
•Persistent Identifiers
–CNRI Handles
–DOI (Digital Object Identifiers)
•Harvesting Standards
–OAI-PMH
IR Software

Key component of an IR is the repository
management software
 Several software now available under open
source license
 Comply with OAI metadata harvesting
protocol
 Released and publicly available
IR Software

ARNO (Academic Research in Netherlands
Online), Tilburg University
http://www.uba.uva.nl/arno
 CDSware (CERN Document Server software,
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
http://cdsware.cern.ch/
I-Tor (Tools & Technologies for open
repositories), Netherlands
http://www.I-tor.org/en/toon
MyCore
http://www.mycore.de/engl/index.html
IR Software

Dspace
- MIT and HP, Cambridge, MA, USA
- http://www.dspace.org
Eprints
- University of Southampton, U>K
- http://software.eprints.org
Fedora digital object repository management system
- University of Virginia, USA
- http://www.fedora.info/
What an IR aim to do
• Capture and describe digital material using a
workflow
– Provide interface for online submission of research
material (intranet)
• Provide access to this material over the web
(metadata and/or full pub)
• Preserve digital material over long period of time
• Expose metadata through OAI-PMH protocol
– Default: Unqualified Dublin Core
– Other metadata standards
EPrints and DSpace








Widely used IR software
Platform
– EPrints: Unix/ Linux/ Perl/ Apache/ MySQL/
XML/ HTML/
– DSpace: Unix/ Linux/ Java/ Tomcat or
Apache/ XML/ HTML/ Ant/ PostGreSQL
Imply software knowledge required for
installing, configuring, and
maintaining archives developed using these
packages.
Institutional Repositories
Institutional Repositories World Scenario: Country Wise
Sl.
No.
Country
OpenDOAR
No.
%
ROAR
No.
%
1.
United States
292
26.11
226
22.96
2.
Germany
124
11.09
83
8.43
3.
United Kingdom
118
10.55
107
10.87
4.
Australia
53
4.74
33
3.35
5.
The Netherlands
44
3.93
23
2.23
6.
Canada
40
3.57
42
4.26
7.
France
37
3.30
39
3.96
8.
Sweden
30
2.68
35
3.55
9.
Brazil
26
2.32
55
5.58
10.
Italy
38
3.39
29
2.94
11.
India
29
2.59
28
2.84
12.
Belgium
22
1.96
15
1.52
13.
Japan
68
6.08
45
4.57
14.
Spain
24
2.14
32
3.25
15.
Others
229
20.48
192
19.51
16.
TOTAL
1118
100.00
984
100.00
IR Statistics
Software:


Dspace
GNU / Eprints
Document Type:
- 30%
- 25%



English
German
French
Spanish
Thesis
– 50%
Grey List
– 45%
Conference Proceedings – 35%
Books
– 30%
Subject Type:
Language:

•
•
•
•
- 85%
– 15%
– 10%
– 6%
•
•
•
•
Multidiscipline
– 55%
Medicine
– 7%
History
– 7%
Library & Information Sc – 5 %
Growth of the OpenDOAR
Database- Worldwide
Usage of Open Access
Repository Software- Worldwide
Subjects in OpenDOAR Worldwide
IR: Core Issues
• Policy Decisions
• Organizational Issues
• Cultural Issues
Policy Decisions
• Scope
- Multidiscipline / single subject /Entire research output
/database for each functional unit
• Types of documents
- Single database for different types /single one
• Software: OSS like DSpace or GNU Eprints or develop own
• Research Deposit Types: Thesis, Journal articles,
Preprints, Reports, Conference papers, Book Chapter, etc
• Resources: Human (IT, Library), Servers, Funding
• Stake holders: Library, Each Department, Institute as a whole
• Services
Management and Organizational
Issues
• Deposit options
- Researcher self deposit and /or assisted deposit
• Metadata quality
- Ensuring quality and rich metadata is labour intensive
• Mandatory metadata fields
• Digitization: Born digital / Scanning
• File formats: Accept all, Only PDF and/or other, Conversion
• Only full text database and/or Bibliographic
• Copyright: RoMeO Publishers Copyright policies
• Quality assurance: Peer review, Editing
• Deposit Agreement and Use Agreement
- Depositor’s declaration: Non-exclusive license - Copyright/Patent/Trademarks
- Repository’s rights and responsibilities: Distribute, Store, Migrate, Copy
Rearrange, Remove
- Use Agreement: Copy, Distribute, Display, Share, Author credit
Cultural Issues
• Advocacy
- Sensitive to organizational culture and background
- Community size
- Strategy: stakeholders, management committees
• Copyright
- Concern of researchers, Legal department
• Positioning
- Library/Institute Website
Directories of Open Access Repositories
OpenDoar (http://www.opendoar.org/)
ROAR (http://archives.eprints.org/)
The University of Illinois OAI-PMH Data Provider Registry
(http://gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry/Info.asp)
Openarchives.eu
(http://www.openarchives.eu/home/home_do.aspx)
OpCit: The Open Citation Project
(http://opcit.eprints.org/opcitabout.shtml)
RoMEO
(Rights
MEtadata
for
(http://romeo.eprints.org /publishers.html)
Open
archiving
Key Features and
Functionality

Registration of institutional users (authors)
- For document submission and other privileged use
-User authentication
- Profile setup
Document submission
- Authentication
- Assign metadata
- Upload document
- Grant license
Approval/moderation
- Submission (metadata, format, affiliation etc)
- Content approval (peer review)
Key features and Functionality
Archiving
- Date stamping
- Unique/persistent identifier assignment
- Preservation support
- Indexing and storage
Dissemination
- Search/Browse
- OAI registration and compliance (metadata exposure)
- Rights management
Administration
-Administration communities, collections, users,groups
- Document formats, metadata
- Licenses, submission policies
- Preservation
COPYRIGHT ISSUES



Berlin Declaration Act recognises the view that community
standards will continue to be important in the enforcement of
proper attribution and responsible use of the published work
The ROMEO project at Loughborough investigated publishers’
attitudes to mounting of pre- and post-prints on servers
The SHERPA project at Nottingham has taken over and augmented the
ROMEO data



http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
Yellow publishers allow preprints but not postprints; blue ones
postprints but not preprints; green ones both; white neither
61% of publishers on the current SHERPA list formally allow some
form of self-archiving; 38% out of the 61% are “green”
ARCHIVAL ISSUES
Budapest Open Access Initiative
Two complementary strategies:
 Self-Archiving: Scholars should be able to deposit
their refereed journal articles in open electronic
archives which conform to Open Archives
Initiative standards
 Open-Access Journals: Journals will not charge
subscriptions or fees for online access. Instead,
they should look to other sources to fund peerreview and publication (e.g., publication charges)

IRs and Open Access

Promote Open Access Archiving

‘Green Road’
 IRs are just one possible vehicle for open
access
– Open access journals
– Subject repositories
Harvesters

Google, Google Scholar, Yahoo
– Harvest metadata from OAI-PMH OAJS, E-PRINT
Archives & IRs

OAI (Open Archives Initiative) Protocol for
Metadata Harvesting
– Dublin Core
– Self-identification

Web Citation Index
Metadata Harvesters







Indexes/harvests metadata from OA Archives &
OAJs
Interoperable, cross searching over Repositories
OAI-PMH Compliant
OAIster – Uni Michigan (wwww.oaister.org)
ARC - ODU, Virginia
ArXIV (Physics, Maths., Comp.Sc)
UIUC Registry of Cultural Heritage ; UIUC Data
Provider Registry
Metadata Harvesters - India
 Search Digital Libraries (SDL) /DRTC harvesting L&IS
s.
subject-specific open access archives and repositories.
 ‘Knowledge Harvester@INSA’, experimental initiative
harvests metadata from 3 archives.
 “SJPI Cross Journal Search Service” initiative from NCSI
at IISc 13 Indian open access journals
 SEED IITD indexes 4 archives
 NAL OAI compliant IRs of CSIR Labs. through a unified
search interface (PKP Harvester)
 Open J-Gate (www.openj-gate.org), a free service open
access journals indexing service Informatics India Private
Limited
Scholarly Communication
Paradigm
IADL: How it operates
Tech Reports Pre-prints Journal Articles Presentation Thesis, etc
Deposit
Metadata +Full Pub)
Digital Repository
Access & Dissemination
NAL DRDO ISRO IISc IITs, Etc
Local Intranet
access
Metadata
OAI-PMH
Service
Provider
ICAST, NAL
Remote Internet
access
IMPORTANT CASE STUDIES

The ARNO project (Academic Research in the
Netherlands Online
 SPARC launched in 1998 by the US Association of
Research Libraries
 TARDiS (Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and
Disclosure U K)
 CDSWARE (CERN)
 DAEDALUS (Univ at Glasgow U K)
 DARE (Digital Academic Repositories Netherlands)
 FAIR (Funded by JISC)
 LEADERS (Linking EAD to Electronically
Retrievable Sources)
Important IRs (World over)
Australian National University
Aalborg University
Universitat Stuttgart
Lunds Universitet
National University of Ireland
University of Glasgow
California Digital Library
MIT
Universite de Montreal
Universitat Essen
Utrecht University
CERN
University of Bath
University of Nottingham
Caltech
Academy of Sciences,
Belarus
Scientific Research in India
• The third largest scientific and technical manpower
in the world
• Vision oriented efforts since Independence (1947 +)
• Exclusive Government Departments for Science &
Technology, Atomic Energy, Space, Electronics,
Oceanography, Biotechnology…
• Over 300 Research Laboratories belonging to CSIR,
ICMR, ICAR, ICSSR, DRDO, ISRO…
• Education/Science performed by IISc, IITs, NITs,
IIMs…and most of the Medical/
Engineering/Business Schools, Universities and
research labs are of international standards
Institutional Repositories:
Indian Scenario

Nearly 50 Institutions
 Public Domain (Internet): 35
 Campus Network/LAN : 15
 Leading IRs
 IISc, ISI, NAL, NCL, NIO, RRI, DU, IITs
1.
Eprints@IISc
Indian Institute of
Science, (IISc)
Bangalore.
http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/
7672
EPrints
2.
Dspace@IIMK
Indian Institute of
Management,
Kozhikode (IIMK)
http://dspace.iimk.ac.in/
295
EPrints
3.
Dspace@IIA
Indian Institute of
Astrophysics (IIA)
http://prints.iiap.res.in/
1903
DSpace
4.
Dspace@NITR
National Institute of
Technology,
Rourkela (IITR)
http://dspace.nitrkl.ac.in/dspace/
557
DSpace
5.
ETD@IISc
Indian Institute of
Science (IISc)
http://etd.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/
289
DSpace
6.
Dspac@
INFLIBNET
INFLIBNET
http://dspace.inflibnet.ac.in
504
DSpace
7.
Librarian's Digital
Library (LDL)
Docum. Res. &
Training Centre
(DRTC)
https://drtc.isibang.ac.in/
249
DSpace
Institutional Repositories:
Indian Scenario

IR Software

Dspace – 25

Eprints - 11

Greenstone – 7

Inhouse
- 7
NAL IR website
NAL IR website
IR - Advantages

New and innovative channel of scholarly
communication
 Provide wider access and visibility to the
research output
 Preserves of institution’s heritage
 Reduce the publication delay
IR – Advantages (Contd…)

Faster communication
 Increase the citation to the publications
 Strengthens research especially in the
Indian context
 Effective communication channel
 A boon for Gray Literature visibility
IR-Technical Benefits
• Free software, therefore appropriate for lowincome countries
• Easy to establish, technical help available
• All IRs are interoperable, conforming to OAIMPH international standards
• Distributed network, shared costs
• Searchable by Google, Yahoo and specialised
search programs (eg OAIster, SHERPA searches)
• Usage (impact) statistics available
• If embargo, immediate deposit gives email
options
Strategic Benefits
Content free to all with access to Internet (Good for readers)
Increases impact of articles (raises visibility of developing country
science); increases usage, forges partnerships (Good for authors)
Maximises return on investments (already being mandated by
institutes and funding bodies) (Good for funders)
Shows institutional achievement (Good for institutes)
Administrative tool (eg RAE) (Good for institutes)
Already ~900 established
Little change to existing publishing practice – no new models
required
Constraints of IR





Absence of a well defined institutional policy
Lack of IR expertise in India
Insufficient funds for IT Infrastructure and
manpower
Apathy of authors towards time consuming and
lengthy deposition procedure.
Ignorance of users in the absence of appropriate
literacy program
Constraints of IR (Contd…)





Publisher’s rigid attitude towards copyright policy
Customization of open source software is a bottle
neck
Nature of content: Classified/restricted and
Unclassified/Open
Diversity of content and the language used in the
full texts
Relying on unproven methods for long term
digital preservation.
IRs for sustainable development?
A light at the end of the tunnel…..
Thank you
?