Effective Tools for Self-Archiving in Institutional Repositories

Abstract

The introduction and implementation of institutional Repositories (IRs) has proven to be a success over the years and has helped scholars make their work known and available. The University Of Zambia (UNZA) like any other Higher education institution also has a repository which is used to preserve and make research outputs: pre-prints and post-prints and electronic thesis dissertation (ETDs) of the staff faculty at the university accessible. The repository at the University of Zambia has functioned well for a good number of years, but despite the increasing interest and encouragement in the use of the repository and recognition that the publisher policies of open access (OA) makes self-archiving achievable, staff faculty deposits in the repository still remains low primarily because most staff faculty are held back by the perception that self-archiving is extra work and this reluctance is downplaying the purpose of IRs. Nevertheless, every problem has a solution and the solution to this is to make self-archiving in IRs as easy as possible for staff faculty and this will be done by designing and implementing effective self-arching tools which will make self-archiving for the UNZA staff faculty a breeze.