Status of Open Access Repositories in the Maritime Field

Maritime is a domain dealing with marine engineering, navigation, shipping and ports, ocean engineering, logistics and transportation and many other areas. Maritime domain has not been much explored in terms of its Open Access (OA) related content. Open Access Resources (OAR) have contributed immensely in making available vital information freely accessible on the web. The OpenDOAR serves as a quality-assured global directory of open access repositories, providing open access to academic research outputs and other electronic resources. This study assesses the expansion and evolution of OARs in the maritime domain, examining their key characteristics including coverage, open access policies, software and content types, annual growth trends, and contributions at the country level. The study used OpenDOAR, a global directory of open access repositories for identifying the maritime related OARs. Various key terms associated with maritime field were employed to find comprehensive list of maritime related OARs. The study found 43 OARs of different kinds related maritime. The study found that Ukraine has more maritime related OARs compared to any other countries. Institutional repositories (IR) are the most common type (81.40 %), followed by disciplinary (13.95 %) and governmental (4.65 %) related OA repositories. Open source software DSpace was the most favoured repository application among OAR developers. It is journal articles that have been featured or found most often in maritime relate OARs compared to any other content type. The studyhighlights the importance of OARs in preserving and disseminating scholarly knowledge in the maritime field and suggests the need for institutions to adopt open access policies to make research more accessible.