Abstract

Ambhore Sagar, Khaparde Vaishali and Ranveer Vishakha

The study reports the functioning of institutional repositories in Japan. Various aspects like nature of
Institutional repositories (IR), type of open access IR, content types, content language, repository
software used, subjects covered, availability of preservation and full text re-use policies and their
growth rate were analyzed. Open DOAR website and the websites of individual institutional repositories
were browsed to collect the required data. 145 IRs of Japan are registered in open DOAR as on
12/03/2015. 142 (98%) of the open access IRs are operational in Japan. 139 (96%) open access IRs in
Japan content belong to institutional repository type. 130 (89% ) IRs in Japan have journal articles, 69
(47%) of them have theses, 62 (42%) of them have Theses and dissertations and 32IRs (22 %) have
Conference and workshop papers. 142 (97%) institutional repositories have contents in Japanese
language. Dspace software has emerged as the most used IR software in Japan open access IRs. 96 IRs
(66 %) use Dspace software. 123 (88%) of them have not defined their preservation policies. 109 IRs
(75%) are multi-disciplinary in nature viz they have contents on many subjects. 20 IRs each have
contents on Health and Medicine and 10 IRs have contents on Science General. 133 IRs (96 %) have not
explicitly defined their full data item re-use policies. The birth of IRs took place in the middle of 2005 in
Japan. The year 2010 could see the formation of around 50 IRs. Kyushu University Institutional
Repository tops with 383877 records, followed by Archives of Kyoto University Research Information
Repository with 149377 records. The study can be further extended to research the individual IRs of
Japan or a comparison of related IRs of Japan. It acts as a guide to the authorities concerned to see
where IRs in Japan are and what they lack. It acts as a yardstick to the authorities to bring out a’
Japanese IR Standard ’ to standardize the content and presentation of Irs.