Abstract:
The present study attempts to identify the contribution of Asian countries in the
Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). The OpenDOAR is an
authoritative directory of academic open access repositories, listed 2,299
repositories in the month of June 2013 when the data were collected. Data were
later presented in tabular forms and analysed using quantitative techniques to
reveal findings in accordance with desired objectives. The results reveal that Asia
is the third largest region in terms of number of open access repositories in the
world after Europe and North America contributing 400 (17.40%) repositories out
of 2299 in all. The highest number of repositories in Asia is contributed by Japan
(138, 34.50%) followed by both India and Taiwan (58, 14.50%). The linguistic
assessment shows that most of Asian repositories (305, 76.25%) accept contents
written in English language followed respectively by Japanese (137, 34.25%) and
Chinese (91, 22.75%). The majority of the repositories is created by the higher
institutions (374, 93.50%) like universities and research centres dealing with
various branches of knowledge. Most of these repositories are multi-disciplinary
(268, 67.00%) whereas more than 10% is related exclusively to Technology
(10.75%, 43) and Health/Medicinal Sciences (10.50%, 42). These repositories
archive various types of materials and most of the repositories preserve articles
(81.50%), theses (52.50%), conference proceedings (35.40%) and books (26.50%).
The administrators have used twenty one (21) software brands to manage 400
repositories in which DSpace is used by the maximum (275, 67.85%) and its
second competitor is Eprints used only by (56) 14.00% of repositories. The study
revealed various facts however; findings should be cautioned as the scope of the
study is limited only to the OpenDOAR.
Machine summary:
Open Access Digital Repositories in Asia: Current Status and Future Prospects Fayaz Ahmad Loan Central University of Kashmir, India drfayazlone H gmai1.
com Abstract The present study attempts to identify the contribution of Asian countries in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).
The results reveal that Asia is the third largest region in terms of number of open access repositories in the world after Europe and North America contributing 400 (17.
Lone, Rather, and Shah (2008) revealed that India shared l0th position with Spain and Sweden in OpenDOAR in terms of number of repositories in the world and ranked the second in Asia after Japan in 2008.
Abrizah, Noorhidawati and Kiran (2010) classified Asian countries in ascending order according to the number of repositories and ranked Japan on top followed by India and Taiwan.
Sengupta (2012) conducted a study on subject specific repositories and depicted that out of 13 open access repositories contributed by Asian countries in the field of Library & Information Science, India ranks first by having (4) followed by Taiwan (3) and Malaysia (2) respectively.
Like the other reputed countries of the world, Asian countries have also joined hands in the open access movement and have created many open access digital repositories to archive their research output for use of present and future generation.
In the present study, the data were collected about four hundred Asian repositories from the OpenDOAR that provides information about country, subject, language(s), content(s) and many other features.