Open-source software for repositories

Abstract

The modern science depends in many ways on efficient provision of fast, quality access to published research findings. The universities have been developing their institutional repositories that are mostly based on open-source software used in over 66% repositories, OpenDOAR reports. For their digital archives, these organizations choose between various possibilities: purchasing licenses, developing their own or using the open-source software. The author analyzes the use of software in institutional repositories of the world leading universities and compares these trends to that of foreign and national institutions. She focuses on the open-source software as that standing up the transition to the open science concept. The structure of 210 university repositories was reviewed. It was found that the open-source software was the most popular with Russian universities while their platforms selection was rather limited as compared to that of foreign universities. Further, unlike foreign universities, Russian higher educational institutions almost never develop their own repositories though have strong potential to do so.