Open Access Digital Repositories in Asia: Current Status and Future Prospects

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.