Compliance with International Standards in Mexican and Guatemalan Thesis Repositories

Abstract

AIMS: To assess whether Open Access thesis repositories in Mexico and Guatemala comply with international standards such as interoperability protocols, minimum required metadata, persistent identifiers, license, copyright ownership and funding information. METHOD: This study employed a quantitative, descriptive, and cross-sectional research design. It was gathered a convenience sample that consisted of 49 institutional repositories from Mexico and 9 from Guatemala. The universe was composed by 98 institutional repositories from Mexico (listed in the Mexican Network of Institutional Repositories) and 9 from Guatemala. RESULTS: It was found that most of the repositories had interoperability protocols. However, the majority did not provide the minimum required metadata. Likewise, most of the sample did not have persistent identifiers, licensing, copyright ownership neither funding information. CONCLUSION: I concluded that most repositories in Mexico and Guatemala from the sample comply with few international standards. I recommend higher education institutions to address the issue concerning the copyright ownership, licensing, persistent identifiers and funding information.