An assessment of the status of Open Access Policies and Repositories Development in Kenya

Academic institutions worldwide have embraced institutional repositories as a means to showcase their research globally. In Kenya, the majority of academic institutions with effective repositories are established universities. Little is known of institutional repositories of newly established universities in Kenya. The study assesses the status of open access policy and repository development in Kenyan universities that were established between 2016 and 2017. The researchers collected data from professional library staff in three newly established universities using questionnaires. In the findings, all the university libraries investigated had functional institutional repositories. The libraries had developed submission and metadata policies. The staff charged with implementing institutional repositories had relevant skills, understood the scholarly communication cycle, and were responsible for recruitment of institutional repository content. The challenges faced in implementing institutional repositories included low levels of awareness of the existence of institutional repositories by the intended users, reluctant of the researchers in submitting their research with the repositories, lack of resources, inadequate staff and submission policy. The findings of this study buttresses the place of information repositories as a platform to share research literature and open access to scholarly materials globally even for newly established universities in developing countries.