Scholarly publishing in transformation : A case study of the implementation of an institutional repository at a Swedish university college

Since the beginning of the 21st century the Open Access-movement, which advocates free online distribution of scholarly information, has gained momentum. Authors can provide Open Access to their work in two main ways: by depositing a copy of their research output in an e-print archive and by publishing in Open Access journals. During the past few years, universities and other research institutions throughout the world have established institutional repositories to manage, preserve and provide access to the intellectual output of the university/research institution. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to describe the implementation of an institutional repository at the Swedish University College of Borås. The thesis also aims to describe the current situation regarding Open Access at the university college. The case study indicates that a requirement for the deposit of references into the repository is believed to have had a significant impact on the contents of the institutional repository. The full-text availability of research publications is, however, at present relatively low. The results show that there are three main barriers in the development of the institutional repository: lack of knowledge regarding Open Access and digital publishing, copyright issues and lack of time. Misconception and uncertainty regarding the guarantee of quality of the digital material are factors that most likely prevent researchers from depositing their research articles into the institutional repository. Librarians play a key role when it comes to informing about self-archiving and Open Access. Our conclusion is that to obtain more research publications in full-text, researchers need to gain more knowledge about institutional repositories and digital publishing.Uppsatsnivå: