Open Access Repositories in Computer Science and Information Technology: an evaluation

Abstract

The study reports evaluation of nine Open Access Repositories in the field of Computer Science and IT. The repositories were identified from the OpenDOAR; directory of Open Access repositories (http://www.open doar.org/). Questionnaires were sent via e-mail to repository administrators to ascertain the background, resources, content management policies, preservation policies, rights management, promotion, advertisement, services, feedback and access statistics of the repositories. The findings revealed that most of the repositories are maintained by 1—2 faculty members on a part-time basis. The most popular software platform is Eprints, on account of its excellent support, ease of installation, transparency of interfaces, configurability, OAI compliance and active development. Most of the repositories follow policies for selection of content and submission of documents, have provision for withdrawal of content by the authors and voluntary faculty deposit policies. Although backups are taken for short term preservation of the content, no strategies have been adopted for long term preservation. Authors are responsible for ensuring copyright compliance of their articles in most of the repositories. Links are provided from library or departmental websites to most of the repositories for promotion and advertisement. Most of the repositories have provision for feedback from users. A few repositories provide access statistics. The paper provides recommendations for the establishment and management of OA repositories.