ABSTRACT
The present study aims to identify the status of Open Access (OA) repositories in the
field of Library and Information Science (LI S) worldwide. Current study is based on
the data collected from the Directory of the Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).
Data collected is systematically analyzed based on selected parameters viz:
geographical distribution, software usage, language diversity, operational status,
repository type, subject coverage and content management policies. The findings
clearly reveal that Open Access (OA) repositories in the field of Library and
Information Science are gaining momentum worldwide as 99 LI S repositories are
registered in OpenDOAR contributed by many countries. The United States is leading
contributing 1 6 repositories followed by United Kingdom ( 1 2) and Germany (8)
respectively . Most of the repositories were hosted by different academic and research
institutions with a contribution of 77 repositories. In terms of software used by the
corresponding repositories it was found that most of them preferred DSpace (4 1 ),
followed by EPrints ( 1 7). The English was seen as the most preferred language in
terms of language interface, it was found that 74.75% of the repositories has interface
in English language, followed by German and Spanish (9.09% each). While
evaluating the operational status, 8 1 .82% repositories were found operational with
6.06%, broken and 2.02% repositories were found closed respectively . Content-wise
information shows that majority of the repositories archived journal articles (7 0.7 1%)
followed by conference & workshop papers and theses and dissertations (56.5 7%)
each. Patents were found less archived forming only 1 .0 1% of the total archived
content type. Regarding the content submission policy to the repositories, it was
found that a majority of 74 (7 4.75%) repositories have an undefined policy while as
1 3 ( 1 3. 1 3%) repositories have 'defined' policy. The study brings to light status of only
99 repositories registered in the open-DOAR (Directory of open access repositories) as
on March 1 1-1 3, 20 1 3.
KeyT erms: Open Access, Digital Repositories, LI S Repositories