A Different Shade of Green: A Survey of Indonesian Higher Education Institutional Repositories

Abstract

Introduction: Institutional repositories (IRs) are an accepted part of the open access landscape, and they have a particular role to play in supporting scholarly communication in developing countries, such as Indonesia. Methods: Content analysis was conducted of 52 Indonesian higher education institutional repository websites between November 2014 and February 2015. Assessment included the degrees of “openness” of repositories, the types of works collected, software used, exploration tools, existence of links to institutional website, the language used for access points, and the standard of metadata. The study also gathered qualitative indicators of local practices in the management and population of repositories. Results: Only 26.9% of the surveyed IRs provide all or most documents in full-text; the most widely included types of work are Theses and Dissertations (84.6%) and Published Works (80.8%), but there is also a high representation of Unpublished Works and University Records. Most IRs (90.3%) provide access points in the form of standardized subject headings, and English is widely used. Discussion: The characteristics of the content of the IRs surveyed suggests that many Indonesian IRs were conceived as a corporate information management system rather than as a genuine attempt to support open access. Conclusion: The findings lead the authors to speculate that institutional repositories serving Indonesian higher education institutions are in their early adoption phase; and that initial drivers for them have been corporate information management, institutional prestige, and the need to combat plagiarism.