User Interface Features and Knowledge Organisation Systems in Institutional Repositories A Case Study of Centrally Funded Technical Institutions in India

Abstract

Institutional Repositories (IRs) are effective systems for managing and disseminating institutions’ in scholarly communication. More specifically, an IR enhances the visibility and discoverability of the content and validates the repository’s importance. Knowledge Organisation System (KOS) strengthens the digital content organisation, connects users with collections, and improves information retrieval functionalities. This paper investigates the present status of user interface features and incorporates KOS in the institutional repository of technical institutions, restricted to Centrally Funded Technical Institutions in India. A group of twenty-four web-accessible institutional repositories was identified, and their KOS and user interface features were evaluated. It was found that user interfaces of all IRs under study comply with essential search and navigation functionalities, such as simple and advanced search, browsing, faceted or filtering approaches, and integration with multiple KOS. Only a few of them include complex KOS, such as control vocabulary. All repositories show their search results in both normal-text and metadata views. Some have specific display features, such as highlighting the query or displaying a thumbnail. Google is one of the most popular search engines that indexes IR content for visibility and discoverability, and approximately 90 per cent of repositories are linked with NDLI. Global visibility and impact participation are moderate, and they require attention.