Krishikosh: A new dimension of digital repository in agriculture

Krishikosh, a digital repository, is a collection of online resources. It is a large collection of Indian resources in agriculture and allied sectors which is both institutional and discipline wise of Indian National Agricultural Research and Education System (NARES). A large collection of thesis, old and valuable books, institutional publications, technical bulletins, project reports, lectures, preprints, reprints, records, etc. is available in Krishikosh (https://krishikosh.egranth. ac.in/). The repository has been designed using open source software with efficient Integrated Content Management System (ICMS), configured to meet the user requirements of a reliable digital repository. It is a customized digital repository platform where users can upload and manage their content in compliance with the open access policy of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. This is a unique platform for sharing the intellectual outputs of the agricultural fraternity hosted by the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, (IARI), New Delhi. At present over 2,01,000 items are available on the krishikosh platform which includes students research work (>150,000 theses), old and valuable documents since 1948 in all major subjects of Agricultural and allied disciplines. The Krishikosh analytics shows over 1,87,23,710 hits on the website from 175 countries since 2017. The top ten countries visiting this digital platform were India, United States of America, Sudan, China, Russia, Ethiopia, Iran, Philippines, Nigeria and Indonesia. Google analytics, during the COVID 19 lockdown period (April-May 2020) indicates a monthly average hit of 6,93,295 indicating higher users on the Krishikosh repository during this time.