Measuring Value in Open Access Repositories

Abstract

Open access institutional repositories were created to promote access to information, encourage scholarly communication, and demonstrate institutional prestige. While these repositories have been widely adopted, the quality of their contents often fails to represent their institution's scholarly output. Moreover, current research uses measurements of quantity, not quality, to assess their value. In response, this article opens new areas of scholarly inquiry by assessing the quality of contents. This is accomplished through a cross-sectional study of repositories at American colleges and universities across the academic spectrum, using citation indexing to identify an institution's articles and authors of highest impact.

Keywords:

• open access
• institutional repositories
• scholarly communication
• academic libraries
• electronic resources
• digital libraries

Acknowledgments

A draft of this article was created in fulfillment of the Academic Libraries and Scholarly Communication course taught by Dr. Deborah Rabina, Associate Professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at Pratt Institute. The authors thank Dr. Rabina, for her unparalleled guidance and support.