Effective Ingestion of Digital Objects in Institutional Repositories Using Subject Repositories

The online visibility of scholarly research output from the Global South is cited as being low. This is despite the increased number of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) setting up institutional Repositories (IR), to facilitate the collection, long-term preservation and effective access to scholarly research output. One of the most common challenges faced by HEIs is ensuring regular ingestion of digital objects in IRs. In order to address this challenge, we propose the use of subject IRs by HEIs in order to facilitate the increased online visibility of scholarly research output. This paper outlines a case study conducted at The University of Zambia (UNZA), in order to demonstrate the feasibility of using subject IR at relatively large HEIs. A situational analysis was conducted to determine the relative effectiveness of ingesting digital objects at UNZA, and additionally, a subject repository was implemented in order to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing subject repositories. The results suggest that it is feasible to implement usable subject repositories, presenting opportunities to decentralise the ingestion of digital objects at large HEIs. This has the obvious benefit of facilitating effective self-archiving of digital objects and the subsequent increased online visibility of scholarly research output.