Indian Institutional Repositories: Policies & Practices

Abstract

The establishment of Institutional Repositories or Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) is a policy issue. There are large number of Research & Development Institutions existing in India largely dependent upon various research councils, ministries and departments for their funding as well as broader policy guidelines. The mandatory policies of these funding agencies are helpful in creating organization wide culture of repositories. The Open Access policy indicatives are being taken by the research organizations like CSIR, ICAR, DBT & DST as well as individual research institutions like NIO, ICRISAT etc. The Open Access Policies are being framed under the directions of International Open Access initiatives like Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), SHERPA and SPARC etc. The authors reporting funded research have to comply with funder’s Mandate, Publisher’s Copyright and Self-archiving Policies and Organizational/ Institutional Policies. The researchers are expected to deposit metadata and full text of acceptable version of article as soon it is accepted for publication, considering embargo period specified. As the Open Access Movement is gaining momentum, there is no dearth of Open Access Journals and Repositories only the Open Access policies and practices within an organization are crucial for the success of IDRs.