Top Institutional Repositories Available for Open Access

Institutional repositories are not just online document storage facilities, they serve as a platform to disseminate the institution's research output and make sure the information is available for open access.

With institutions worldwide investing in repositories, these platforms are becoming the world's most extensive and valuable sources of information and data. The best part is that most of these are open access, and scholarly work can be viewed or read from anywhere, anytime in a few clicks.

So which are the most prominent top institutional repositories out there? That's what we discuss in this article and also highlight why these platforms are thriving.

Top 10 Institutional Repositories

This list is based on Webometric’s Ranking of Institutional Repository. It is an initiative by Cybermetrics Lab, who are part of Spain's public research body, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas (CSIC).

1. The Astrophysics Data System

The ADS is a digital repository that primarily covers astronomy and physics and is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory under a NASA grant.

• Size of the collection: 15 million+
• Topics covered: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Planetary Sciences, and related research.
• Items available: Journal Article, Proceedings Article, Eprint, Book Chapter, Abstract, Circular, Tech Report, Proposal, Ph.D. Thesis, Book, Proceedings, Catalog, Press Release, Master Thesis, Software, Editorial, Images, and more.
• Content language: English
• Accessibility: Visitors can view or download the files without creating an account.

Visit the ADS repository.

2. NASA STI Repository (NTRS)

The NTRS is a digital repository that provides the general public access to scientific and technical information created or funded by NASA.

• Size of the collection: 4.3 million metadata records and over 500K full-text documents
• Topics covered: Aerospace
• Items available: Research Memorandum, Special Publications, Accepted Manuscripts, Videos, Thesis, Dissertations, Conference Proceedings, Technical Publications, Patent Information, Contractor or Grantee Report, Presentation, Preprints, Reprints, and more.
• Content language: English
• Accessibility: Most resources are open to everyone, except for NTRS-R content, which is only available for registered NASA Community members (civil servants, contractors, grantees, etc.).

Visit the NASA STI Repository.

3. Repositório Digital Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul LUME

The LUME is the digital repository of scholarly work produced by Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, one of Brazil’s largest public federal research universities.

• Size of the collection: 177555 (metadata count)
• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Theses, Dissertations, Articles From Scholar or Professional Periodicals, Graduation and Post-graduation Monographs, Research Technical Reports, and Records of Work Produced and Presented in Events, Photographs, and Videos.
• Language: English, Spanish, and Portuguese
• Accessibility: ​​Visitors can view or download the files without creating an account.

Visit the LUME repository.

4. Belarusian State University Digital Library

BSU Digital Library is the online repository of Belarusian State University. The university is home to one of the oldest and most prominent libraries in the country.

• Size of the collection: 175364 (Metadata) and 12237 (Full Text)
• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Articles, Conference Papers, Syllabus, Theses, Audio, Abstracts, Texts, Diploma Thesis, Reports, Books, Newspaper Clippings, and more.
• Language: Russian, and English
• Accessibility: ​​Visitors can view or download the files without creating an account.

Visit the BSU Digital Library.

5. Kyoto University Research Information Repository (KURENAI)

The KURENAI features all types of scholarly works produced by Kyoto University, the second oldest university in Japan.

• Size of the collection: 218454 (Metadata) and 143533 (Full Text)
• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Departmental Bulletin Paper, Journal Article, Theses or Dissertation, Research Paper, Conference Paper, Presentation, Book, Data or Dataset, Preprint, Learning Material, Technical Report, and Software.
• Language: English and Japanese
• Accessibility: ​​Visitors can view or download the files without creating an account.

Visit the KURENAI repository.

6. Charles University Digital Repository

The CU Digital Repository is a database of theses and dissertations of Charles University students, established to comply with the Charles University Study and Examination Code, which requires the documents to be made publicly available.

• Size of the collection: 121450 (Metadata) and 9374 (Full Text)
• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Theses and Dissertations
• Content Language: Czech and English
• Accessibility: You have to create an account to view or download the full text.

Visit the CU repository.

7. Jagiellonian University Repository / Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego

The JUR is the digital repository of Jagiellonian University, a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364, it is the second oldest university in Central Europe and one of the oldest surviving universities globally.

• Size of the collection: 225862 (Metadata) and 17497 (Full text)
• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Journal Articles, Bibliographic References, Theses and Dissertations, Reports and Working Papers, Books, Chapters and Sections, Patents, Datasets, and more.
• Language: Polish and English
• Accessibility: Visitors can view or download the files without creating an account.

Visit the Jagiellonian University Repository.

8. eScholarship Repository

The eScholarship encompasses the scholarly output of the ten different campuses and other affiliated research centers of the University of California.

Size of the collection: 308982 (Metadata) and 42233 (Full text)

• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Working Papers, Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), Student Capstone Projects, Paper/seminar Series, and Supplemental Materials (Video, Audio, Images, etc.).
• Language: English
• Accessibility: Visitors can view or download the files without creating an account.

Visit the eScholarship Repository.

9. Portal of the Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

This portal was set up to share the scholarly work produced by the University of São Paulo with the general Brazilian public and international societies.

• Size of the collection: 100832
• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Dissertations, Theses, and Habilitation Theses.
• Language: English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish
• Accessibility: Visitors can view or download the files without creating an account.

Visit the Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations of the University of São Paulo.

10. UP Commons Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya

UP Commons collects, manages, disseminates, and preserves the teaching and research output of the members of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.

• Size of the collection: 12800+ publications
• Topics covered: Multidisciplinary
• Items available: Eprints, Theses, Conference Papers, Data Sets, Academic Papers, Teaching Materials, Heritage Collections, and more.
• Language: Catalan, Spanish, and English
• ​​Accessibility: Varies according to access rights of the document in question. Open access publications can be viewed and downloaded freely.

Visit UP Commons.

Now that you know the top repositories, the next step is to dig deeper and learn the reasons behind their success.

Institutional Repository Best Practices

To save you some time, we have gone ahead and compiled a list of institutional repository best practices that you must follow. Whether you are looking to improve an existing repository or setting up a new one, these guidelines should help you stay on track.

1. Be sure to set up an Institutional repository Policy

Analyze the various processes involved in the functioning of an institutional repository. Set up rules for each aspect, starting from deposit workflow, research presentation, and data management. It ensures that everyone is on the same page and knows what is permitted and what is not.

Check out the University of Kyoto's repository, KURENAI; its administrators have clearly outlined who is eligible to make deposits, what can be deposited, and much more.

2. Ensure the deposit workflow is effortless

To keep the repository running steadily, you need a continuous stream of new deposits. One way to ensure that is to make the deposit workflow seamless. Take feedback from students and faculty and find out the difficulties they are facing while depositing a research document. Then, work with your software provider to ensure that the flow is streamlined.

Typeset’s very own Discovery Suite makes the deposit workflow incredibly easy. Users will have to simply log in, enter all the relevant information, upload suitable files, as simple as that. The best part is that it comes with Copyright Detection technology allowing faculty, researchers, and library staff to do a quick copyright status check and see what format can be shared for public access.

3. Make the website and the scholarly output SEO-friendly

One of the main goals of building an institutional repository is to gain visibility. To achieve that, you need to ensure the scholarly output ranks on search engines such as Google for relevant keywords. That demands search-optimized abstracts, adding metadata, a well-structured website built in keeping with search engine best practices, among other things.

Typeset is a global leader in improving the visibility of research. Universities and research organizations worldwide use our best-in-class solution to search-optimize their research output and drive traffic to their repositories.

4. Monitor key metrics regularly

Tracking critical metrics like downloads, citations, organic traffic, and pages indexed has multiple benefits:

1. It helps administrators find out what is working and what is not.
2. Faculty and researchers will be encouraged to deposit more or optimize existing content because they know their work is getting discovered.
3. Key decision-makers and fund-grantees are more likely to see the value in it if you can back up your claims with impact numbers.

To give you an example, LUME Repository makes metrics such as downloads per country, views per year, downloads per year publicly available.

5. Provide multilingual support

If you want the scholarly output of your institution to be accessible to a global audience, you need to make sure the user interface is multilingual. Which language should you go for? That depends entirely on the context.

For instance, the University of Sao Paolo’s Portal of the Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations supports Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English.

Conclusion

Having an institutional repository is a great way to reinforce your institution’s commitment to Open Access. The permanent and unrestricted access it offers ensures that the scholarly output of your institution is not locked up or remains unused.

Now, if you are looking to level up your institutional repository or set up a new one, why not give Typeset a try. Typeset's cloud-hosted Discovery Suite (and CMS) allows you to seamlessly host, manage and showcase your institutional repository.

It comes with everything you need: integrated writing and publishing tools, copyright detection, streamlined deposit and approval workflows, SEO-optimized summaries, search-friendly indexing, robust reporting and analytics tools, and much more.