Analysis of the opinions and use of open access repositories by researchers in different disciplines; with specific focus on the development of a new institutional repository at Leeds Metropolitan University

Institutional repositories, which have been in existence since 2002, are open, web-based archives of research publications produced by members of a particular institution. Many UK Universities are now hosting or developing institutional repositories, believing that they will enhance the scholarly communication at the University and they will help to promote the institution. For IRs to become an accepted method of sharing information, a significant amount of work must be deposited in them, however to date researchers have shown little interest in depositing work in IRs. It has been suggested that differences between disciplines in terms of culture, funding, means of research and means of sharing information may account for the difference in uptake to IRs. I carried out an analysis of all the UK University IRs, and found that while there is a bias towards science/technology and medical research in the IRs compared with arts and humanities research, this corresponded to the bias in publishing output in these disciplines. Other studies have highlighted barriers that researchers perceive to placing their research in IRs. Leeds Metropolitan University is currently developing an IR and I undertook a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with Leeds Met research staff to compare their attitudes and behaviours towards depositing their work in IRs. I found that awareness of open access amongst research staff is quite high, with 66% having some knowledge of open access. Also, many researchers appear to understand the benefits offered by this alternative to traditional journal publishing. Concerns raised amongst the research staff included many of the same concerns as published in previous studies. I found little difference between disciplines and length-of-service of the researchers (although my survey numbers were low). The IR development team at Leeds Met should endeavour to address these concerns in order to achieve successful uptake of the new IR at the University. The success of the Leeds Met IR also depends to some extent on the self-archiving policies of publishers with which Leeds Met researchers have published their work. These self-archiving policies are not clear for many publishers, who may be re-considering their policies due to recent changes and may see the development of IRs as a threat to their business.