Institutional Repositories of Russian Organisations: a Comparative Analysis

Abstract

In order to study the current state of domestic institutional repositories (IR), the official websites of 106 Russian universities — participants of the programme “Priority-2030” and 454 scientific research institutes (SRI) of three categories approved by the Federal Agency of Scientific Organisations according to the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation from April 8, 2009 No. 312 “On the assessment and monitoring of the effectivness of scientific organisations performing research, development and technological works of civilian designation” were monitored. A comparative analysis of IR was carried out. In the course of the study the following data were analyzed: availability of the IR on the site, navigation on the site for the convenience of using the IR, content, functionality, visibility, accessibility of materials, etc. Despite the fact that the problems of creating and developing repositories are actively studied both in Russia and abroad, the results of the study showed that the practice of maintaining IRs in Russian universities and scientific organisations is unevenly developed. In scientific institutions repositories are created much less frequently than in educational organisations. However, a half of higher education institutionsʼ IRs are closed to remote users. Access is granted only to teachers and students of educational institutions. In some repositories it is not always possible to successfully use scientific information, as not all repository objects contain the full text of the document, references to external sources are not always correct. The resource base of repositories of higher education institutions is richer than that of research institutes, because in addition to the works of their staff, it includes educational collections and student works. Mostly IRs provide text documents, very rarely other data (audio, video materials, data sets).Repositories of educational and scientific institutions are limited by chronological frameworks, including mainly documents of 1990—2022. Materials from earlier years of publication are presented in small quantities or include only metadata. The IRs of higher education institutions much more often provide wide search possibilities: choice of simple or advanced search options, use of logical operators, faceted navigation. Except for isolated cases, the IRs of research institutes have one search window with the possibility to search by keywords.Providing open access to information in repositories increases the visibility and accessibility of scientific research results, citability of publications, and promotes scientific communication.