Theses, essays, books, articles, presentations, reports, and even administrative documents… these and other scientific and academic products from the Tec are available in one place: the Tecnológico de Monterrey Institutional Repository (RITEC), a site that houses the publications generated by faculty, researchers, students, and collaborators of the Tec.
“The purpose of the RITEC is to be the centralized site for preserving, organizing, and making visible the scientific production, resources, and other learning publications generated by the academic and scientific community of the institution, as well as special collections and artistic works that we have under preservation and are available in open access,” said Carmen Serna Castañeda, head of the RITEC.
A Tool for Visibility
Full access to the content of digital resources makes the Institutional Repository a key support tool for teaching and research, while also multiplying the visibility of these publications and giving them international projection.
Carmen Serna mentioned that the spirit of institutional repositories with open access is to preserve and disseminate knowledge, and for a university institution like Tec, this is of great importance as it allows sharing what is produced at the institution with external audiences.
“The RITEC increases the visibility of scientific publications and ensures that knowledge transcends borders, not remaining only at the Tec, but having an impact throughout Mexico and internationally, always adhering to national laws and the global UNESCO mandates,” she mentioned.
Benefits of the Tecnológico de Monterrey Institutional Repository:
- Increases visibility and web presence.
- Achieves a greater impact from research conducted by members of the institution.
- Promotes scientific works produced by the academic community of the institution.
- Provides a unique, complete, and easily accessible scientific collection, as well as the means to analyze, manage, and evaluate the institution’s scientific production more efficiently.
A Great Collection
The collections that make up the RITEC are robust, multidisciplinary, and multi-format, as they cover areas such as medicine, business, engineering, humanities, etc., with resources spanning digital publications, videos, and Virtual Reality files. Additionally, each year, the collections are evaluated to ensure their update and quality.
Edith Salazar, leader of the Monterrey Campus Library, said that currently, more than 80,000 documents make up the Repository, which are divided into six collections:
- Cultural Heritage: Documentary and art collections (61,333 documents)
- Academic Production: Educational resources to support, complement, accompany, or evaluate the educational process (3,788 documents)
- Administrative Production: Institutional documents of an informational, regulatory, or administrative nature (216 documents)
- Scientific Production: Scientific research produced or edited by Tec members (4,404 documents)
- Periodicals: Scientific and dissemination journals published by Tecnológico de Monterrey (2,525 documents)
- Theses: Theses and dissertations to obtain an academic degree from Tecnológico de Monterrey (11,554 documents)
The RITEC began as a repository in the year 2000, initially consisting only of theses and documents related to Cultural Heritage. However, in 2015, it was officially established as an institutional repository, progressively adding new collections.
During the activities of the Tec Science Summit 2025, RITEC’s new features were presented, including new collections and a redesigned platform.
Among the updates, Serna announced that RITEC is now part of OpenDOAR, an international directory of open access repositories with guaranteed quality, offering free and open access academic resources and products. Each repository integrated into this directory is carefully reviewed and processed by an editorial team, ensuring a reliable service for the community.
OpenDOAR is the most important repository directory worldwide, promoted by the University of Nottingham. “This now allows us to have communication between all repositories internationally; this way, Tec can access documents from universities like MIT, Harvard, and others around the world, and vice versa, RITEC documents are available to everyone.”
5 Steps to Upload a Document to RITEC
Self-deposit or self-archiving is the process by which authors upload their own works or scientific documents to the Institutional Repository. According to Carmen Serna, the steps to self-archive a document are:
- Activate Account: Create an account on RITEC at https://repositorio.tec.mx/home
- Deposit: Upload the final scientific document (in PDF format), sign the authorization letters, and fill in the metadata (ORCID ID, Title of the work, Author’s name, Keywords, Abstract, Affiliation with Tecnológico de Monterrey, etc.)
- Review: The document will be reviewed by the Institutional Repository committee.
- Cataloging: At this stage, the document is placed under embargo.
- Publication
What is an embargo?
An embargo is a mechanism that aims to benefit the author. It refers to the time it takes for a work to become visible to the public; “during this period, the work is kept private until the designated time expires. During this time, all elements of the work, such as the descriptors that identify it, the cataloging record, etc., are analyzed to ensure its quality,” explained Serna.
For more information about the Tecnológico de Monterrey Institutional Repository, you can write to: repositorio@servicios.itesm.mx, or contact Carmen Serna at cserna@tec.mx
