The National Library of Korea Enhances Convenience in Searching and Using Academic Research Materials

[Asia Economy Reporter Seomideum] The National Library of Korea has revamped the ‘Open Access Korea (OAK) National Repository,’ which allows searching and utilizing domestic open access academic research materials. Open access is an international movement that enables various research outputs to be freely shared simultaneously with their publication.

The National Library of Korea distributes the OAK repository to domestic universities and research institutes, enabling each institution to register and manage the research outputs of their affiliated researchers. Since 2014, it has provided institutional repositories to a total of 56 institutions, and approximately one million academic records collected through this are made conveniently accessible to anyone worldwide via the ‘OAK National Repository.’

The newly revamped ‘OAK National Repository’ implements browsing of the entire data through ‘View by Institution’ and ‘View by Type’ functions. It also enhances search convenience by enabling searches of journal full texts, tables, figures, and references. Additionally, responsive web technology has been applied to optimize screen layouts according to the user’s device.

An official from the National Library of Korea stated, “We hope that with this website renewal, research outputs from various fields will be actively shared through the ‘OAK National Repository.’ This year, we plan to continue various supports to promote the sharing of domestic open access academic research resources, including distributing guidelines for establishing OAK repository operation policies and supporting the digitization of journals transitioning to open access.”