Digital curation practices in institutional repositories in South India: a study

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify the digital curation practices in institutional repositories (IRs) in South India. Design/methodology/approach A voluntary survey was conducted among the IR managers of 23 South Indian IRs, and the response rate was 87%. Findings This study found that the active participation of South Indian IRs was only seen in a few digital curation activities. However, of the 33 digital curation activities analyzed, the active participation of repositories was only seen in ten digital curation activities. The performance of preservation activities was extremely low, and disagreements were recorded by the survey participants toward several digital curation activities. The most disagreed digital curation activities were emulation and cease data curation. All the participants had assigned metadata and allowed file downloads in their repositories. Raman Research Institute had provided a good number of digital curation services in their IR. Originality/value This is an in-depth study investigating the digital curation practice currently underway in South Indian IRs, and the researcher could not find similar studies in this niche.