Purpose – This paper aims to explore the critical factors that contribute to the success of institutional repositories worldwide. Previous research indicates that there is little agreement surrounding what constitutes a successful institutional repository. Design/methodology/approach – Possible key factors were extracted from literature review and responses from expert panels. A web-based survey questionnaire forming a total of 69-item statements was developed. The questionnaire, when pilot-tested, was found highly reliable. The questionnaire was then distributed to 322 institutional repository managers, who are representative of the population, via the OpenDOAR email distribution service. Data collection ended in four months, once the sample volume of usable questionnaires reached 295, which is 91.6 per cent response rate. Findings – The results of the factor analysis indicate the possibility of 46 variables under six factors being important for the success of institutional repository implementation. These six factors are “Management”, “Services”, “Technology”, “Self-archive Practices”, “People” and “Resources”. Practical implications – This study has empirically tested and consolidated the factors which are important in institutional repository implementation worldwide and documented them as critical success factors. Originality/value – It also frames questions about the possible value of developing some guidelines or standards related to success factors to be able to monitor the deployment of institutional repositories.

Traditionally, picture-based password systems employ password objects (pictures/icons/symbols) as input during an authentication session, thus making them vulnerable to “shoulder-surfing” attack because the visual interface by function is easily observed by others. Recent software-based approaches attempt to minimize this threat by requiring users to enter their passwords indirectly by performing certain mental tasks to derive the indirect password, thus concealing the user's actual password. However, weaknesses in the positioning of distracter and password objects introduce usability and security issues. In this paper, a new method, which conceals information about the password objects as much as possible, is proposed. Besides concealing the password objects and the number of password objects, the proposed method allows both password and distracter objects to be used as the challenge set's input. The correctly entered password appears to be random and can only be derived with the knowledge of the full set of password objects. Therefore, it would be difficult for a shoulder-surfing adversary to identify the user's actual password. Simulation results indicate that the correct input object and its location are random for each challenge set, thus preventing frequency of occurrence analysis attack. User study results show that the proposed method is able to prevent shoulder-surfing attack.

Purpose -A significant amount of digital repository research and development activity is taking place worldwide, which calls for the investigation of issues identified as critical to the development, management and sustainability of these repositories. The purpose of this paper is to establish a comprehensive set of critical success factors (CSFs) that would enable successful digital libraries implementation. Design/methodology/approach -The design of this study is exploratory in nature due to lack of previous research about CSFs in digital library projects. The paper builds the research framework to find CSFs for digital libraries initiatives by collecting possible factors from literature on CSFs of information systems; and feedback from ten experts who have had experience in digital library research and development as well as implementation, through e-mail interviews. Six dimensions in the enterprise architecture framework (namely motivation, resource, people, process, location and time) needed to create the environment in which digital delivery can be effective and sustained, are mapped with the CSF established from the literature. Findings -The results revealed six dimensions of CSFs and 36 potential success factor statements contributed by the study participants. Based on these findings, this paper postulates that successful deployment of a digital library implementation may depend on this set of success factors. The identification of these factors has important implications on digital library development. Originality/value -There has been no comprehensive study on the success factors of digital libraries in the library and information science context, as such, no investigation of the factors in some real-life contexts of digital library activities. It may help digital library start-ups to understand what sources and services they need to develop to make their applications successful in an already very populated network. Both researchers and practitioners in the field of digital libraries may value the novelty and results of this study.

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