Understanding Faculty Contribution for the Institutional Repository: A Case Study at University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

Abstract

An institutional repository (IR) is a digital collection capturing and preserving the intellectual productivity of a university. The faculty contribution is considered one of the success factors for an IR; in fact there is a need to explore their knowledge and willingness to contribute to the IR. The main objective of this study is to investigate the awareness of academic authors towards the IR and the factors that motivate the use of these repositories.Questionnaire based survey method was employed and the self administered questionnaires were distributed among all permanent academic staff members in the University of Peradeniya on May, 2015 and out of 751, 279 duly completed questionnaires were received making a 37.1% response rate. The results revealed that most of the respondents learnt about the IR as a result of a web search engine (26%), information provided at faculty or any other meeting held in the university (24%) and by working in a field with established subject based archives (23%). Only 44% of the respondents were aware of the university IR and 49% mentioned that they are not aware of it. With regard to the frequency of IR use, only 14% use IR very frequently while 25% somewhat frequently, and surprisingly 17% rarely used and majority of the respondents (31%) has not used IR at all. The interesting finding is that 56% of the respondents reported their willingness to contribute to the university IR while 18% of them were not willing to contribute in future. Those who willing to contribute to IR mentioned they contributed because they support the principle of open access (39%) and it enhances visibility and recognition of the author’s work within the institution (35%) and beyond that. With regard to the depositing materials to the IR, 49% of the scholars prefer to publish conference papers rather than research reports and post print articles. The major barrier to contribute to IR is fear of plagiarism (32%). In light of these results, there is a need to create more awareness and to educate the faculty on the importance of the IR as it enhances visibility and recognition of the author’s work. At the same time the university should conduct an open access advocacy campaign and training sessions for researchers to demonstrate access and publish in open access repositories.