Open access subject repositories: An overview

• Published in: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology Vol. 65; no. 4; pp. 698 - 706
• Main Author: Bjork, Bo-Christer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, MA Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.04.2014; Wiley
• Subjects: Bibliometrics. Scientometrics; Bibliometrics. Scientometrics. Evaluation; Channels; Collection; collection management; digital libraries; Exact sciences and technology; Information and communication sciences; Information science. Documentation; Institutional repositories; Internet; Library and information science. General aspects; Markets; Open access; Repositories; Reproduction; Retarding; Scholarly communication; Sciences and techniques of general use; Search engines; Tightening; Research field; Growth; Periodical; Search result
• ISSN: 2330-1635; 2330-1643
• DOI: 10.1002/asi.23021

Subject repositories are open web collections of working papers or manuscript copies of published scholarly articles, specific to particular scientific disciplines. The first repositories emerged in the early 1990s, and in some fields of science they have become an important channel for the dissemination of research results. With quite strict inclusion criteria, 56 subject repositories were identified from a much larger number indexed in 2 repository indices. A closer study of these demonstrated a huge variety in sizes, organizational models, functions, and topics. When they first started to emerge, subject repositories catered to a strong market demand, but the later development of Internet search engines, the rapid growth of institutional repositories, and the tightening of journal publisher open access policies seems to be slowing their growth.