Evaluating FAIR practices in Indian institutional repositories: A tool based assessment

Abstract:  The Registry of Open Access Repositories has registered 135 Indian repositories. The repository infrastructure in universities and research institutions in India is continuously growing. This paper analyses the category wise Indian Institutional Repositories based on repository type, state wise and software platforms and assesses the FAIR compliance of the selected Indian repositories registered in ROAR based on the entity of the repository such as theses, Institutional publications and others documents residing in the repository based on the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles. A systematic assessment design was embraced and the repositories were evaluated by F-UJI tool. Some of the key indicators that were evaluated in the assessment include persistent identifiers, metadata quality, access protocols, interoperability standards and licensing information. The findings note a moderately uneven compliance with FAIR with the overall scores being 11 percent to 76 percent. The Institutional Repositories of NIT Surathkal and IIT Delhi exhibit a relatively high fair maturity of repositories. Findability and Accessibility are doing better as they can be searchable based on metadata and the standard web based access mechanisms. Interoperability and Reusability is poor in most repositories because of the low levels of structured metadata standards and lack of machine readable licensing schemes. India has developed a working repository ecosystem, metadata standardization, interoperability practices and reuse support. Repository policies need to be strengthened and improved. There is also a need to formulate a standard and uniform national repository policy in order to ensure consistency and effective implementation across repositories.