International Survey of Research University Faculty: Use of Institutional Digita: Use of the Institutional Digital Repository

The study presents data about use of institutional digital repositories by more than 500 faculty at 55 research universities from the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland. The study provides extensive data on the tendency to deposit, uses of access data generated by the repositories, success of outreach by librarians, faculty attitudes towards institutional repositories and open access, and their suggestions for repository management. Data in the report is broken out by more than 10 criteria including but not limited to: country of origin of faculty member (with separate data for the USA, Canada, UK/Ireland and Australia), age and gender of faculty member, academic field, size of university, academic title or position, world university ranking, and many other useful variables. Just a few of the 75-page report’s many findings are that: • 29.57% of faculty in social sciences, law and history vs. only 9.26% in literature and languages have been approached by a librarian to deposit a publication in the institutional digital repository. • Postdocs and fellows were more likely than professors or associate professors to have had a publication fee paid for them by their university to enable their work to appear in a open access journal or institutional digital repository; 18.18% of the postdocs and fellows in the sample have enjoyed this privilege. • Use of repositories by faculty tended to be greater by younger than older faculty and, with the exception of those age 30 and under, for whom use was low, use peaked in the 31-39 age group and dropped as age of faculty increased. • Deans, heads of departments and holders of distinguished chairs were much less likely than others to say that they were not really sure if their university had a repository, only 12.5% of them gave this answer. Faculty from the following universities participated in the study: Australian National University, Brown University, Carleton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University. Drexel University, Emory University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Griffith University, Imperial College London, McGill University, Miami University, Monash University, Penn State - University Park, Penn State College of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Rice University, Rutgers University, Saint Louis University, Staffordshire University, Swinburne University of Technology, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, University of Michigan, University College Dublin, University Nottingham, University of Alberta, University of Birmingham, University of California at Davis, University of California Riverside, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Chicago, University of Connecticut, University of Idaho, University of Leeds, University of Maryland, University of Maryland College Park, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nottingham, University of South Florida, University of Strathclyde, University of Technology Sydney, University of Toronto, University of Utah, University of Western Australia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Virginia Commonwealth University, Washington State University, Washington State University Tri-Cities, Western Michigan University and Yale University.