Web Based Open Access Institutional Repositories in Indian Universities:

An Exploratory Study

Presented bySriparna Das Purkayastha

Central Library, Assam University, Silchar

Nilratan BhattacharjeeDepartment of Library and Information Science

Assam University, Silchar

O Creation of new knowledge through the practices of research

and scholarship is a core activity of the university community

and it lies in the heart of every university’s mission. Research

and scholarship created within a university community should be

disseminated in a large scale to the global world for building

capacity of the institutional research and to make contribution in

the global research output. Previously universities have depends

more on print form of publication systems for disseminating and

communicating institutional research output, but after the

development of digital technologies specially Institutional

repositories, universities are now in a better position to share

their intellectual scholarly research output to the digital world in a

fast, easy and convenient way.

INTRODUCTION

Institutional Repository

O Institutional Repository (IR) is a digital

archive of intellectual scholarly products

created by the scholar community of an

institution or group of institutions accessible

to end users both within and outside the

institution.

OBJECTIVES

O The primary aim of this paper is to explore the current

scenario of the initiatives taken so far for building web based

IR in Indian universities. The specific objectives of this study

are as follows;

O To find outnumber of web based Institutional repositories in

Indian Universities;

O To know the number of repositories registered with online

repository database directory.

O To analyse the characteristics of Indian University based

online IR’s in terms of their content type, subject coverage,

size, language, software use, IR policy etc.

O The survey method was adopted in this study to

analysis the current status of online institutional

repositories in Indian universities. Survey of all

the Indian university websites have been done

by the researchers for retrieving the primary

data relevant to the present study. Research

data was analysed and conclusions were drawn

and presented in the form of tables in this

paper.

methodology

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

O This study was confined to explore the web based Institutional repository initiatives of Indian universities. All the central, state and private universities of India are included in this study which has an web based Institutional repository.

O The limitations of this study lies in the fact that it covers only the web based institutional repositories of Indian universities and Institutional or Local Area Network (LAN) based Institutional repositories are excluded from the study.

O The study founds that a total of twenty

seven (27) functional university based web

Institutional repositories are present in India

so far including Central, State, Private and

Deemed Universities.

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

State No of Repositories

Karnataka 4

Kerala 3

Delhi 4

Gujarat 3

Jharkhand 1

Punjab 2

Uttar Pradesh 1

West Bengal 2

Sikkim 1

Goa 1

Meghalaya 1

Pondicherry 1

Jammu and Kashmir 1

Himachal Pradesh 1

Tamil Nadu 1

STATE WISE REPRESENTATION OF INSTITUTIONAL

REPOSITORIES-INDIAN UNIVERSITIES

Repertories Registered With Online Repository Database Directory.

O Software Usage: Study founds that a total of 20 repositories out of 27 (74.07%) repositories are running on DSpace platform followed by EPrint 5 (18.51%), CALIBRE 1 (3.70%), Nitya 1 (3.70%).

Online Database

Repository

No of repositories

registered

DOAR 17

ROAR 14

Both 13

Not Registered 09

Subject Wise IRO Study shows that out of 27 university based IR

multidisciplinary repositories are highest in number with

24 (88.88%) repositories, followed by Social Sciences 2

(7.40%), health and medicine 1 (3.70%). It is clear from

the present study that in most of the cases one

repository archives more than one subject.

O Language Variety

Language No of

Repositories

Percentage (%)

English 27 100%

Hindi 4 14.8%

Sanskrit 3 11.1%

Gujarati 3 11.1%

Bengali 2 7.40%

Arabic 1 3.70%

Persian 1 3.70%

Kashmiri 1 3.70%

Malayalam 1 3.70%

IR-Policy :

Developing IR- Policies is an important, necessary, and

complex activity during implementation of an IR. In the present

survey of web based Indian universities institutional repositories

it is found that only two (2) of the repositories have a clearly

mentioned IR-Policies viz. Saurastra University and

University of Kashmir.

Size of the repositories :

Study result found that in terms of size Jadavpur University’s IR

is the biggest repository with 28,129 items among all the Indian

University’s Institutional repositories and Guru Gobind Singh

Indraprastha University is least with 135 items.

Sl.

No

Name of the University Link to IR Software

used

Size

1. Cochin University of Science and

Technology-Digital Libraryhttp://dspace.cusat.ac.in/jspui/ DSpace 6833

2. Cochin University of Science and

Technology- Digital Repository,

Dyuthi

http://dyuthi.cusat.ac.in/xmlui/ DSpace 3647

3. Goa University http://library.unigoa.ac.in:8081/xml

ui/

DSpace 534

4. Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha

Universityhttp://dspace.ipu.edu:8080/xmlui/ DSpace 135

5. IGNOU (egyankosh) http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/ DSpace 26996

6. Jadavpur University http://dspace.jdvu.ac.in/ DSpace 28129

7. KLE University http://182.48.228.18:8080/jspui/ DSpace 430

8. M.S University of Baroda http://14.139.121.106:8080/jspui/ DSpace 261

9. National University of Educational

Planning and Administration ,

New Delhi

http://14.139.60.153/ DSpace 5732

10. North-Eastern Hill University http://dspace.nehu.ac.in/ DSpace 4590

11. Osmania University Digital Library http://oudl.osmania.ac.in/ DSpace 24506

12. PanditDeendayal Petroleum

University, Ganghinagar

http://203.77.192.116:8080/xmlui/ DSpace 162

13. Pondicherry University http://dspace.pondiuni.edu.in/jspui/ DSpace 572

14. SRM University http://digitallibrary.srmuniv.ac.in/ds

pace/

DSpace 364

15. Thapar University, http://dspace.thapar.edu:8080/dspac

e/

DSpace 2636

16. University of Delhi http://eprints.du.ac.in/ EPrints 170

17. University of Kashmir http://dspaces.uok.edu.in/jspui/ DSpace 989

18. University of Mysore http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/ EPrint 9286

19. Vidyasagar University http://14.139.211.206:8080/jspui/ DSpace 633

20. Manipal University http://eprints.manipal.edu/ EPrints 9245

21 Mahatma Gandhi University http://www.mgutheses.org/ Nitya 1898

22 RGUHS, Delhi http://14.139.159.4:8080/jspui/ DSpace 8537

23 ChitkaraUniversity http://dspace.chitkara.edu.in/jspui/ DSpace 161

24 Saurastra University http://etheses.saurashtrauniversity.edu/

EPrints 1015

25 Central University of Jharkhand

http://dspace.cuj.ac.in/jspui/ DSpace 341

26 Christ University, Bangalore http://repository.christuniversity.in/ EPrints 4922

27 Aligarh Muslim University http://socsccybraryamu.ac.in/ CALIBR

E

14782

Institutional Repositories now plays an important role in academic

and research institutions, where intellectual/ cultural outputs are

being archived, managed and disseminated to the global world.

Institutional Repositories are now undoubtedly recognized as an

essential tool for sharing the scholarly research output of a

university community. It is one of the best possibilities which can

be utilised by each and every university community to make their

research output widely available and accessible to interested

users throughout the world. Present study gives a clear status of

the web based IR’s of Indian Universities and from the results it

concludes that Indian Universities are still lagging behind in

developing IR’s in comparison to universities of developed

countries.

CONCLUSION

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