Institutional repositories provide online access to full text information and multimedia files. In general, open access is provided to the full text files linked to the entries. Institutional repositories emerged to address the challenge facing most organizations, namely the management of and access to the vast number of knowledge artifacts, ranging from journal articles, research reports, books, research papers, and conference papers to ad hoc explicit records in electronic formats. All of these require effective management, preservation, and curation for efficient retrieval to facilitate the sharing of scientific knowledge. One of the expectations of the international scientific and research community is to be able to monitor and share information among peers. Although organizations are expected and required to be able and willing to provide other bodies with the access required after they have implemented their own repository, it remains a voluntary service. It is however, required that international copyright laws are honored by the individual authors and the institutions implementing a repository service. Authorisation to include items should either be verified against the Sherpa/Romeo list or else, obtained from the copyright holder.
South African research organizations and academic institutions have joined the global drive of making knowledge available in a free and open manner. The drive within South Africa is gaining momentum as more academic institutions and research organizations are starting to participate. In the spirit of cooperation and sharing, this list of repositories provides an entry point to the wealth of information located in South African Repositories.