One of the major objectives of an open access repository is to support long term archiving of institution specific knowledge objects and thereby formulating an archive policy for any OAR is an important task for the repository developers. The major issues related to archiving centre around one basic question—what is to be deposited: the submitted manuscript, the accepted manuscript, or the published paper. It is found that a total of 36 repositories out of 51 repositories (70.5%) have mentioned this policy. The majority of these 36 repositories (twenty-three (23) repositories) have recommended archiving an author’s final peer-reviewed version immediately after acceptance of publication, Whereas seven (7) repositories (out of 36 repositories that reported an archiving policy) have mentioned archiving the published edition (this is the version of record, the version finally published) and the rest of the repositories in these 36 repositories (nine (9) to be exact) support the deposition of any version ‘no later than the publication date’. Nevertheless, Queensland University of Technology (sl. no. 1) and Joint Information Systems Committee (sl. no. 45) support as well the pre-print as the post-print version. It is interesting to note that there are differences among repositories with respect to the ‘time-point of deposit’ (Figure 1). For example, seven (7) repositories mention deposition of items ‘by end of policy-permitted embargo’ specified by the publishers, six (6) repositories suggest deposition of items ‘when publisher permits’ and another six (6) repositories recommend time-point of deposit as ‘No later than the time of acceptance’.

This policy covers some relevant questions such as ‘what will be the appropriate contents and what will be the Ingest policy’.

Advocacy within the organization has become a crucial aspect of the ‘Institutional Repositories’ movement (Chan, Kwok, & Yip, 2005) as ‘IR’ is relatively new and the academic community is unfamiliar about the concept (Davis & Connelly, 2007; Foster & Gibbons, 2005; Ghosh, 2011; Ratanya, 2017; Rieh et al., 2007; Swan & Brown, 2005; Troll Covey, 2011; Watson, 2007). As a result, the majority of repositories lack content and are uneven in contributing objects to the ‘IR’ (Figure 3).

After analyzing COAR-member repositories, it is found that the average number of objects deposited to the IR is very low and the growth rate of deposition is not satisfactory. Generally, old repositories (in terms of origin) managed and maintained by elite organizations have large number of varieties of objects and maintain consistency over time in term of addition of record numbers in comparison to those OARs that are at implementation stages or in their infancy. And, repositories started functioning long ago upload objects on a regular basis. Only 2 repositories have more than 200,000 items and fall under category–1 whereas another 3 systems fall under category–2 having content range 100,001–200,000. A total of 10 repositories have uploaded less than 5000 items whereas another 7 systems fall under category-2 having more than 5000 items (Figure 3). Only two (2) repositories did not mention their total number of objects.

So, promoting the repository with faculty has become a challenging task for the repository administrators. To increase the continuous flow of contents to the IR, faculty participation is essential because they are both contributors as well as users of IR (Bamigbola, 2014; Kyriaki-Manessi, Koulouris, Giannakopoulos, & Zervos, 2013). Carr and Brody (2007) stated that the key to a successful repository is sustained deposits and to achieve sustained deposits, community engagement is recommended (Henty, 2007). In addition, several other advocacy activities such as continuous marketing and promotion (Leary, Lundstrom, & Martin, 2012; Troll Covey, 2011); collaboration and participation (Aschenbrenner, Blanke, Flanders, Hedge, & O’Steen, 2008; Lynch, 2003; Thibodeau, 2007); providing incentives (Cullen & Chawner, 2008; Giesecke, 2011; Xia et al., 2012) for the depositors may be adopted in acquiring content into IR.

In practice, there are no such elements in any of the IRs under study. The study of the collection development and growth rate (in terms of total number of objects uploaded) shows that growth is not expected. So advocacy must be the part of any IR system. Johnson (2008) has rightly said that ‘advocacy is a route to achieve the crucial goal, real cultural change’.

Generally, IRs hold items that may be owned by the institution, the author or the publisher (Gadd, Oppenheim, & Probets, 2003). So, it is desirable to have rights management mechanisms in place to allow or restrict access to content (Crow, 2002). This policy specifies what users can do with the content. Generally, content contributors grant a non-exclusive right to reproduce, translate and/or distribute the work (including the abstract) worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium. But studies (Gadd, Oppenheim & Probets, 2004; Xia et al., 2012) recommended the use of Creative Commons licenses to express the rights attached to individual research papers.

After reviewing all COAR member repositories, it is found that 35 (68.6%) repositories have mentioned this policy and twenty three (23) repositories suggest authors to retain the key rights. Only seven (7) repositories have clearly stated their licensing model e.g. CC (Creative Commons)-BY or equivalent and another seven (7) repositories require an open license but did not mention its type. This CC license is used when an author likes to give access to the content in the public domain and users can modify, re-use, or re-distribute the licensed work even for commercial purposes subject to proper acknowledgement. Only three (3) repositories reported that authors willingly grant key rights to the institution whereas another two (2) institutions or funders retain key rights instead of granting it to the authors (mostly mandatory).

By default, items in the repositories should not have any access restrictions and should be “…accessible to end users both within and outside of the institution, with few if any barriers to access” (Crow, 2002). However, a variety of legitimate circumstances might require an institution to limit access to a particular content to a specific set of users.

It is found that 37 (72%) repositories have mentioned this data access policy. Some of the repositories (sl.no. 16, 17, 24, 37, 47) do not hold all full-text items whereas some other repositories (sl.no. 23, 30, 37, 48, 49, 51) support restriction on access under special circumstances and full-text access (in whole or in part) is limited only to the registered members. For example, in the case of Lund University (sl.no. 37), only a few items are available as full text, and many are only bibliographic entries or links to external service providers (e.g. e-journal sites) which may or may not be available to external users, depending upon local or personal subscriptions. In case of the Humboldt University (sl. no. 15), some items are not available via OA and are only available as metadata (bibliographic record) entries.

MIT (s.l.no. 49) has explicitly mentioned that the community retains the right to limit access to content at the item level either to MIT only or to specific individuals or groups. It is the responsibility of the communities to establish access control policies for content in their collections, or community level. Like MIT, the University of California (sl.no. 51) reported that full text access may be restricted to members of the community whereas Cornell follows three types of access (i.e. anyone; Caltech users only; repository administrators only) and imposes restriction on access to full-text for specific cases for specific items for a certain period. Although copies may be requested in this period (sl.no. 30). The University of Melbourne (sl. no. 2) allows restriction on access and in some of the cases no attached file are available.

Now the question arises how far COAR member repositories are open? How many documents are available in full-text? Though there are clear differences in opinions among the open access advocates regarding the concept of ‘openness’, Chan (2014) stated that the concept ‘openness’ is not simply about gaining access to knowledge, but about the right to participate in the knowledge production process, driven by issues that are of local relevance, rather than research agendas set elsewhere or from the top down.

It is clear from Annex 1 that only ten (10) repositories have mentioned that an object has to be made OA only ‘when publisher permits’. Another nine (9) repositories have suggested providing access to the contents ‘by end of policy-permitted embargo’. On the other hand, another four (4) repositories (sl.no. 15, 27, 43, 50) support providing access ‘as soon as the deposit is completed’. It is also found that 49 (96%) repositories (37 OARs from column 6 and 12 OARs from column 7 of Annex-1) support some form of access restriction. It is also clear from the section 5.1 viz. Archiving policies that repositories do not provide immediate access to the contents and most of the cases objects are made available only after the embargo period is over or when publishers allow. Interestingly, when the embargo period expires, the picture varies and the percentage of availability of OA full-text articles increases.

Here, only some significant results have been mentioned. For example, Queensland University of Technology (sl. no. 1) has only 56.0% full-text documents whereas 48.0% objects are available in open-access mode. Ghent University (sl. no. 3) has 110,892 (45.5%), out of a total of 243,441 objects, full-text documents whereas 39,338 (16.1%) are available in open-access. University of Konstanz (sl. no. 138) has 18,276 full-text documents whereas 17,217 have no full-text. University of Regensburg (sl. no. 16) contains 61% full text documents and only 60% are open access. Uppsala University Library (sl. no. 40) holds 764,047 items and only 121,402 (15.8%) items are full-text.

It is also found that openness rates vary from objects to objects or disciplines to disciplines. And, important documents like journal articles, PhD theses, books or book chapters are less open and restricted than others due to copyright or embargo policy. For example, the University of Edinburgh imposes restriction on access in case of PhD theses (submitted recently). In case of Cornell University, some of the theses are restricted up to 2–5 years.

After analyzing the COAR repositories, it may be concluded that some of the OARs do not house all full text items and some items are not available via OA. Even, some are only available to registered members. Generally, OARs impose restriction on access (column 7 of Annex 1) and follow the publisher’s policy (column 5 of Annex 1) before making content open access.

Determining the embargo period or retention period is another aspect to be considered before depositing objects into open access repositories (OARs) or making them freely available to the public. Most of the publishers and funders impose a range of constraints in the form of embargoes in order to make profit during this embargo period. Basically, this policy works against the concept ‘OA’ as it does not provide immediate free full text access to the content. Generally, questions arise on what version (e.g. pre-print, post-print or published version) is to be deposited in the repository.

It is found that a majority of the repositories do not have this policy and majority of the repositories usually maintain 12 months duration as the most common embargo period. But there are a few organizations that allow longer embargoes depending upon the nature of the subject and the type of document (ROARMAP, 2018). It is to be noted that COAR, in principle, supports embargoes of not more than 6 months for the life and physical sciences, and 12 months for social sciences and humanities.

Here, only 12 (23.5%) repositories have their embargo policy and maintain a retention period, although this varies from subject to subject or discipline to discipline (Annex 1). Only thirteen (13) repositories have clearly stated twelve (12) months as the embargo period where seven (7) repositories from the ‘Science, Technology and Medicine’ discipline and six (6) repositories from the ‘Humanities and Social Sciences’ discipline. Another five (5) repositories recommend maintaining six (6) months as the retention period where three (3) systems are from ‘Science, Technology and Medicine’ and another two (2) repositories are from the ‘Humanities and Social Sciences’ discipline (Figure 4). Only one (1) system (sl.no. 1) suggests following 12 months as the embargo period for all subjects whereas another (1) system (sl.no. 11) suggests maintaining 24 months as the retention period for a discipline like ‘Science, Technology and Medicine’.

This section discusses interoperability and metadata issues that ensure interoperability of diverse systems and facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.

This policy ensures continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary (Hockx-Yu, 2006), as one of the features of IR is that it must be cumulative and perpetual (Crow, 2002). Generally, repositories accept many open file formats, and PDF is the common choice of almost all repository managers due to its suitability for long term preservation (Cervone, 2004; Pinfield, 2002; Rimkus, Padilla, Popp, & Martin, 2014). Here, repositories have no formal preservation policy except for the recommendation of file formats that are likely to facilitate long-term preservation. Only 12 (23.5%) repositories have this policy. Only three (3) systems (sl.no. 46, 49, 51) support techniques like migration to a new file format. In addition, MIT prefers emulation (for software), where necessary. Another three (3) systems (sl. no. 45, 46, 50) keep backing up their files according to current best practices and transfer the database to another appropriate archive on the system.

Studies strongly discourage withdrawal of items (Probets & Jenkins, 2006; Ware, 2004a) because one definition of IRs is that items should be cumulative and perpetual (Johnson, 2002). Only six (6) repositories (sl. no. 2, 6, 46, 48, 49, 50) have mentioned withdrawal of items under different circumstances. The common reasons are – plagiarism or copyright violation; request of the author; publishers’ desire/publishers’ rules; national security; falsified research etc. Though withdrawn items are not deleted per se, but are removed from public view.