Success Factors of Institutional Repositories (IR) Performance in Malaysian Academic Libraries

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the success factors of institutional repositories and its institutional repositories performance in Malaysian academic libraries. The Institutional Repositories (IR) is a new scholarly communications platform in providing and disseminating digital contents of a university and academic institution. The objectives of the study are: (1) to identify the perception of academicians on the success factors of institutional repositories and its IR performance in Malaysian academic libraries, (2) to compare the success factors of institutional repositories in terms of genders, grade position, education level, years of work experience and work department, (3) to examine the relationship between the success factors of institutional repositories and its IR performance and (4) to measure the effect of success factors on IR performance. This study is a quantitative study using the survey method. The questionnaire was distributed to 357 academicians in five research universities in Malaysia. The research universities are Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Respondents are academicians from various faculties and fields starting from grade DS 45 until VK (Professor). From the total respondents of 357, only 257 (71.9%) of the questionnaires were returned and useable for further analysis by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics of perceptions scores such as demographic details of respondents, means and standard deviations for each dimension were tabulated. Analytical methods for inferential statistics such as correlation analysis, statistical test of significant differences and multiple regression analysis were conducted. This study measures the perceptions on six success factors of institutional repositories (IR) that consists of knowledge sharing, self-archiving, IR usage, IR policy, IR procedure and copyright awareness toward IR performance among academicians in a Malaysian university and to seek the relationship between success factors of IR and IR performance. The result indicated that knowledge sharing was the most preferred response as perceived by the respondents (mean = 0.648) followed by IR usage (mean = 0.547). It also showed that, knowledge sharing and IR usage were moderately correlated with institutional repositories performance. Through ANOVA test, the results showed that there were significant differences on knowledge sharing, IR usage, copyright awareness among age group of respondents. In terms of grade group, knowledge sharing and copyright awareness factors were significantly different. For multiple regression analysis, the dimensions of Knowledge Sharing, Self-Archiving, IR usage, IR Policy, IR procedure and Copyright Awareness explained 55.1% of the variance in Institutional Repositories Performance. There is adequate evidence to conclude that the success factors of institutional repositories; Knowledge Sharing, IR Usage, IR Policy and Copyright Awareness are significant predictors in measuring IR performance. This research contributes to the development of an empirical framework for assessing IR performance, managerial skills in IR, the literature and knowledge in IR services and the development of a questionnaire. The outcome is important for academic libraries, particularly in terms of improving institutional repository services and measuring the performance of the university's research activities.