Analysis of open access digital repositories of social sciences at the University of Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract:  Purpose - The study aims to emphasize the development of institutional repositories' conceptual framework as well as how it has affected academic and scholarly communities in terms of increased exposure, a broader audience, and quicker dissemination of research. In the community of open access academic platforms, the characteristics of institutional repositories that set them apart from the competitors, are highlighted. This study aims to evaluate academic institutional repositories in Croatia in the field of social sciences at the University of Zagreb. Methodology/approach - Data were collected by examining digital repositories of nine academic institutional repositories (Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Kinesiology, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Organization and Informatics, Faculty of Political Science, Faculty of Economics and Business, Faculty of Teacher Education with Faculty of Croatian Studies and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, both of which belong to social sciences and humanities). Findings - The University of Zagreb has a total of 80,308 digital objects, out of which 29,592 objects are stored in Social Sciences digital repositories (36.85%). A total of 12,426 digital objects (41.99%) are in open access. The Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences has the fewest stored digital objects, 956 (3.54% of the total number of digital objects in the field of social sciences), but it has the most objects stored in open access (1,050; 90.8 %). The Faculty of Law has the fewest objects in open access, out of 4,307 digital objects, only 11.1%. Most of the objects are, as expected, in Croatian (27,900, 94.28%) followed by the ones in English (1,089; 3.68%). The most prevalent kind of academic materials to be found in institutional repositories are theses and dissertations, followed by journal articles and conference papers. A total of 28,601 (96.65%) graduation theses and final theses are stored in the repositories. Originality/value - The benefits associated with institutional repositories are manifold. Repositories provide users with information that would not otherwise be accessible for a variety of reasons, such as the absence of supplemental data (unpublished reports and working papers, audio-visual items and multimedia, learning objects, bibliographic references, datasets, lecture notes, other special item types, and so forth) or the paywall/subscription models used by commercial channels of scholarly communication. The findings demonstrate that the University of Zagreb is seeing a wave-like development of institutional repositories. The results from the study provide insight into the development of institutional repositories in the scientific field of social sciences and offer suggestions for higher education librarians and management teams.