Institutional repositories (IRs) are increasingly gaining prominence among African academic institutions, and Ghana is no exception. This can largely be attributed to the enduring value of hosting research outputs from institutional and individual depositors. Despite its increasing adoption, there is a growing concern about the sustainability of open access IRs, particularly in Africa. However, most of these factors that threaten the sustainability of IRs on the continent can be mitigated by enacting comprehensive institutional policies. Thus, this study sought to examine the role of institutional policies in the sustainability of IRs in Ghana. A total of 830 respondents comprised of IR managers, library staff, postgraduate students, lecturers and university librarians (management) from five public universities in Ghana took part in this study. Questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and document analysis were the main instruments used for data collection. The study yielded an overall response rate of 92.8%. The study findings revealed that public universities in Ghana have institutional IR policies that guide the operation, usage and management of their IRs. However, these policies were persuasive in nature and mainly focused on content submission and generation issues. The study underscored the IR policy’s importance in addressing content generation, awareness, advocacy and copyright restriction challenges. The study recommends the necessity of IR policies to focus on other factors such as technical requirements, expertise and others to ensure the sustainability of these repositories.

中文翻译：

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机构政策在非洲机构知识库可持续性中的作用：加纳的反思

机构知识库（IR）在非洲学术机构中日益受到重视，加纳也不例外。这在很大程度上归因于托管机构和个人储户研究成果的持久价值。尽管开放获取 IR 的采用率越来越高，但人们越来越担心开放获取 IR 的可持续性，尤其是在非洲。然而，大多数威胁非洲大陆国际关系可持续性的因素都可以通过制定全面的制度政策来缓解。因此，本研究旨在探讨制度政策对加纳综合报告可持续性的作用。来自加纳五所公立大学的 830 名受访者包括 IR 经理、图书馆工作人员、研究生、讲师和大学图书馆员（管理层）参加了这项研究。问卷、半结构化访谈和文件分析是数据收集的主要工具。该研究的总体响应率为 92.8%。研究结果显示，加纳公立大学制定了机构 IR 政策，指导其 IR 的运营、使用和管理。然而，这些政策本质上是有说服力的，主要集中在内容提交和生成问题上。该研究强调了国际关系政策在解决内容生成、意识、宣传和版权限制挑战方面的重要性。该研究建议 IR 政策有必要关注技术要求、专业知识等其他因素，以确保这些存储库的可持续性。