Faculty Publications

Document Type


Publication Date

May 2011


Open Access and institutional repositories are rapidly making their way into the scientific communication s pipe line. Many universities are implementing their own intellectual production repositories using open access strat egy and technology as a means for maintaining and accessing these archives. With this trend, libraries and researchers have free access to an abundance of subject, institutional and author access points. The literature is becoming robust in presenting the results of research depicting benefits from its use and the challenges libraries face implementing such initiatives. This research investigated 92 university and technological library directors from 66 different countries regarding their perspective on OA and institutional rep ository‟s benefits as well as the main challenges they face to implement such initiatives. Th irteen library directors from 10 different countries answered the survey. These results were then compared to the data reported in the litera ture of the area. Eleven benefits were reported. The main ones were: expends the circulation of scientific work; creates global visibility for an institution‟s scholarly works; maximizes research; accelerates the dissemination of research information; prov ides access to archival literature and allows digital copies to be posted in subject - specific institutional repositories. Thirteen barriers or challenges were presented. The main ones being: technological infrastructure; lack of budget or funds; lack of sp ecialized personnel, and lack of implementation and maintenance quality control system.