Search Engine Optimization as a motivational factor for researchers to submit their material on the institutional open repository case study of Uganda Christian University.

Search engines are widely used by researchers to locate research materials on the internet, they provide optimization techniques to content developers to allow their content show up among the top lists while a user types in their topic of interest. Repositories that have not been optimized will not show up among the top lists or never at all making its content to have low visibility and therefore low citations. Researchers then see no benefits of submitting their content on these platforms. I propose that all open repositories be search engine optimized because this will lead to the content of their researchers more visible to other researchers. Visibility will allow for more citations and hence a motivating factor for researchers to submit more content to the institutional open repository. I also demonstrate the impact of this on Uganda Christian University open Repository where I started off without optimization and later optimized. The number of researchers willing to give us their work has increased greatly due to the benefit of visibility of their research online. I believe that the greatest motivator of researchers is having their work more visible to the public other than monitory benefits.