The behavior of academic investigators using an institutional repository

Abstract

Institutional repositories (IRs) are a new strategy for universities to expedite changes in scientific communication. They are digital collections that store, preserve, and make available the intellectual output of one or more universities. Housing this production in an IR can solve problems such as the high acquisition and maintenance costs of collections, and the publication of gray literature, reports and post-prints. However, the IR brings new questions about copyright that are still in discussion. It can also improve the situation of the universities that are responsible for producing 70% of the scientific papers, buying from commercial editors about 90% of the articles they consume, compromising part of the budget in the acquisition of periodicals that bring back the results of their own work. The use of open archives by IRs should stimulate self-archiving, since it assures a more efficient dissemination of digital documents. However, self-archiving is a new task, sometimes perceived as an additional burden in overcrowded schedules, not yet part of the habits and routines of researchers and academic staff. This work is justified in a socio-cultural context, especially in understanding the behavior of investigators from different knowledge areas and cultures in their acceptance and use of IRs, being possible to know important factors in its adoption. This way, we intend to provide the academic managers guidelines that help them to promote a culture of sharing and disseminating the scientific information produced by their institutions, increasing the investigation’s excellence.