Establishment of an open access repository in a university: The Goa University saga

Abstract

The scholarly communication scenario was totally monopolized by the publishers hindering the access to scholarly literature. Costs for subscription and restricted access alienated researchers from getting access to such literature. Open Access and Institutional repositories have come up to save the situation to a great extent. Some people believe that Open Access IRs are alternatives to the traditional publishing where as others believes that IRs only supplement the traditional publishing. However, Academic institutions all over the world have set up IRs and allowing faculty and researchers to self-archive or deposit their research output. This article explains in detail the story of the establishment of an IR at Goa University and the issues and impediments the team faced while establishing it.