Open access to scientific resources of institutional repositories of Ukrainian higher educational institutions for information and library direction

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse the level of providing open access to scientific resources in Ukrainian higher education institutions’ institutional repositories for information and library direction. The research methodology is based on general scientific and special cognition methods, including analysis, synthesis, monitoring and comparison. The scientific novelty of the work consists of expanded ideas about the possibilities of activating the work of higher educational institutions’ institutional repositories for information and library direction as a component of determining their ratings at the world level through the maximum realising openaccess provision to their scientific resources for developing scientific and technical progress. Conclusions. The article analyses the institutional repositories of 10 higher education institutions for information and library direction by using Webometrics, QS World University Rankings, and SimilarWeb. The analysis of using the level of institutional repositories testified to its inadequacy. The research based on using web analytics by SimilarWeb made it possible to identify four leaders of higher education institutions in terms of the number of users’ visits to their repositories: West Ukrainian National University (WUNU), National Aviation University (NAU), Ternopil National Technical University named after Ivan Puluj (TNTU). Geographical, gender, age, thematic diversification of higher educational institutions’ institutional repositories, as well as the level of their using the main communication channels (direct appeal, regular search, referrals, e-mail, social networks) thanks to the analysis of their websites’ traffic were determined. The recommendations for improving information culture for scientific and pedagogical staff, students, librarians, management of higher educational institutions for information and library direction, and all participants of scientific communication were given through activating their using institutional repositories to promote them in the global scientific and educational space as components in increasing the rating positions of higher educational institutions in Webometrics and QS World University Rankings thanks to providing open access to scientific resources for developing scientific and technological progress.