Academic scholars attitude towards deposit in institutional repositories of Universities in Karnataka a study

Abstract

In the world, there are currently 24,000 journals publishing 2.5 million papers per year on average. In this condition, University libraries, whose budgets are constantly reduced, cannot subscribe even to the necessary minimum of scientific journals. As a result, as it was in the paper era and is still true today in the era of the Internet, each of the 2.5 million papers published every year loses the greatest part of its potential readers because it is not accessible to them. Many researches these days indicate that Institutional Repositories (IRs) are becoming the tool for promoting academic research work by providing Open Access to the academic community. Institutional Repository is now regarded by many universities as an advanced and innovative method in communicating research results. Majority of the researchers are not willing to publish their research work in the Institutional Repositories as long as they gain a reputation by disseminating their work in prestigious journals and through well known publication mediums. The primary data was collected by survey method. Two types of questionnaires were constructed in the process of data collection. At many times, the investigator has personally visited the libraries and the academic scholar group to have speedy data collection and sometimes to seek clarifications from the respondents. Content analysis was used to analyze data emerging from Open-ended as well as closed-end questions. Researchers deposits research material for a various reasons. 969 (56.80%) respondents motivated to contribute to the IRs. All the 1736 researchers responded to both the awareness and perception questions. Majority of the researchers were found be aware of the Institutional Repository concept the perception to make publicly access to result through the Institutional Repository have been found strong and positive. 56.80% (n=969) of the academic scholars agreed that it was very important to publish in IRs in order to disseminate their research findings. newline newline newline