Scholarly publishing in Australian digital libraries: An overview

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine current trends in the development of scholarly publishing in digital libraries (DL), with particular reference to Australian Universities. This paper is the result of preliminary study based on the visits made to university libraries in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. The objective of this paper is to analyze the various aspects of Institutional Repositories (IR) in Digital Libraries (DL) and its development in Australia. This article showcases the latest trends in DL which have adopted various technologies (i.e. open source or commercial or mixed) adopted in Australia. The government plays a prominent role in development of DL and supports scholarly publication through various digitisation projects. The paper concludes that there is a need for change in policy on mandatory submission of theses to reduce the cost, time and manpower efforts towards conversion. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.