[Irtalk] Webometrics Repository Ranking July 2010 - 41 DSpaces in Top 100

[Smith, Ina <ismith@sun.ac.za>]

Source: facebook http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/notes/mire/webometrics-repository-ranking-july-2010-41-dspaces-in-top-100/410508203767

Earlier this month, the CSIC (Spain) published it's Top 800 Institutional Repository Ranking<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=ce27ed8cda12ca8d8232610794a76fac&url=http%3A%2F%2Frepositories.webometrics.info%2Ftop800_rep_inst.asp>. That's right, instead of listing 400 institutions, they now increased this to 800. This is useful and motivating for smaller repositories, to monitor their progress, even if that means jumping from the 500 range to the 400 range.

A short introduction about the Webometrics Repository Ranking initiative:

The aim of the Ranking is to support Open Access initiatives and therefore the free access to scientific publications in an electronic form and to other academic material. The web indicators are used here to measure the global visibility and impact of the scientific repositories.Read a full description of the methodology<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=8761904684c7f21ccbed487417a19663&url=http%3A%2F%2Frepositories.webometrics.info%2Fmethodology_rep.html>

This months ranking is strongly shaken up, compared to the January 2010 ranking. Although there is no formal or full explanation, 2 elements could contribute:

- .xls files are no longer counted as full texts ("rich files").
- Because of "strange results" visibility in the Bing search engine was excluded form the visibility parameter.

Changes in the ranking algorithm always make it very tedious to compare this ranking to previous editions, but as the author, Dr. Isidro F. Aguillo, states:

"Web is still evolving, I think in the future, the web will reflect even better the reality, in the meantime I am fueling the virtuous circle. If the ranking push people to web publish then web indicators become more trusted."

Thanks to some fine work of Claudia Jürgen in the past<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=89c20e6d782fe0dc3a534d89177ea27a&url=https%3A%2F%2Feldorado.tu-dortmund.de%2Fhandle%2F2003%2F26032>, identifying repository platforms for the listed ones, and the work I did on the July 2009 and January 2010 rankings, we compared this new ranking to the old one.

In overall, DSpace's presence among the top 100 listed repositories is fairly stable, with 41 repositories listed now, compared to 45 in January 2010 and 43 in January 2009.

We're very proud to see @mire clients, and their repository projects, listed here. Click them for more information on the project.

Here are DSpace repositories for which the rank improved, compared to January 2010:

+4 NA Ohio State University Knowledge Bank
+7 EU University of Helsinki Ethesis
+8 EU Cambridge University Dspace
+12 EU Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Lirias Repository<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=836a1f20598efdb0eacdce370b8907b7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fatmire.com%2Flirias.php>
+21 EU Tartu University Library Dspace
+23 EU Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Archivo Abierto Institucional<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=8d367d0c691bb96247f2780c6fad51e8&url=http%3A%2F%2Fe-archivo.uc3m.es%2F>
+24 EU Diposit de la Recerca de Catalunya
+29 NA University of Kansas Scholarworks
+34 CA University of British Columbia CIRCLE<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=f3935ef04b883e28fc5a76550c9bf1a5&url=http%3A%2F%2Fatmire.com%2Fubc.php>
+35 EU Research in Atmosphere, Cryosphere, Hydrosphere and Solid Earth Fields
+49 NA University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Ideals

Unfortunately, there were some Instances who dropped in the ranking:

-119 EU Malmo University Electronic Publishing
-110 AS Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers
-104 AS Ochanomizu University Web Library Institutional Repository
-90 AU Flinders University Academic Commons
-86 EU Universitat Dortmund Eldorado Institutionellen Repositorium
-78 AS Nagasaki University Academic Output
-78 NA SUNY Dspace
-77 NA Rochester Institute of Technology Digital Media Library
-77 EU Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Academic Repository
-69 AS National Tsing Hua University Repository
-66 NA University of Oregon Scholars' Bank
-66 AS Kanazawa University Repository for Academic Resources
-64 NA University of Rochester Research
-63 AU Australian National University Dspace
-60 EU Aberystwyth University Cadair Repository
-51 NA University of Calgary Dspace
-48 EU Universidade do Minho Repositorium
-44 AU University of Sydney E-Scholarship
-43 NA Cornell University eCommons
-43 NA Boston University Digital Research Archive
-41 EU Leiden University Digital Repository
-41 NA Rice University Scholarship
-38 AS University of Tokyo Repository
-36 NA AMNH Scientific Publications
-35 IBC Biblioteca Digital Jurídica do Superior Tribunal de Justica
-34 AS Waseda University Dspace
-34 NA University of Wisconsin Digital Repository
-32 AS Kyushu University Institutional Repository
-31 NA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Beacon Espace
-30 NA Caltech Authors
-29 AS Indian Statistical Institute Digital Library
-27 NA University of Michigan Deep Blue
-22 EU National Library of Finland Dspace Services
-22 AU University of Adelaide Digital Library
-21 NA Université de Montreal Depot Institutionnel Numerique
-19 NA University of New México Institutional Repository
-18 AS Nagoya University Repository
-15 NA Oregon State University Scholarsarchive
-15 IBC Universidad de los Andes Repositorio Institucional
-15 EU Goteborg University Open Archive
-15 EU University of Bergen Open Research Archive
-15 NA Simon Fraser University Institutional Repository
-11 EU University of Edinburgh Research Archive
-8 EU Igitur Archive Universiteit Utrecht<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=e1e4d400fe66dd7fa188a9ea2edcd8bc&url=http%3A%2F%2Fatmire.com%2Futrecht.php>
-8 EU INIST I-Revues<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=cb1575c9c1c213300e53ef57bc7994b4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fatmire.com%2Finist.php>
-8 NA Georgia Tech's Institutional Repository
-7 NA University of Toronto T Space
-5 EU Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya Upcommons
-3 AS Kyoto University Research Information Repository
-2 EU Digital CSIC
-1 NA MIT Dspace

We were able to identify a few institutions who weren't in the top 100 before, but are now. Unfortunately, we have no exact ranking for these institutions from previous editions. (position - institution name - positions won):

35 EU Université de Liège Open Repository and Bibliography
59 NA ScholarSpace University of Hawai'i at Manoa
73 EU Libre Acces Aux Rapports Scientifiques et Techniques
74 NA University of Texas at Austin Libraries Digital Repository
96 NA Smithsonian Institution Digital Repository

Especially the Université de Liège's appearance on place 35 is remarkable, as it's a very high entry for an institution not being in the top 100 before (so it's at least 65 positions up)

It would be great to hear from the top climbers, if they made certain customizations or improved their repository in a certain way, to explain the improvement in rank. At this point it's very hard to identify whether the change in the algorithm is fully responsible for the changes, or whether best practices at institutions could explain the changes.

To make a further analysis for your institution, it could be useful to compare the 4 different metrics between July & January:

Size (S). Number of pages recovered from the four largest engines: Google, Yahoo, and Exalead.
Visibility (V). The total number of unique external links received (inlinks) by a site can be only confidently obtained from Yahoo Search and Exalead.
Rich Files (R). Only the number of text files in Acrobat format (.pdf) files extracted from Google and Yahoo are considered.
Scholar (Sc). Using Google Scholar database we calculate the mean of the normalised total number of papers and those (recent papers) published between 2001 and 2008.

After the ranking in January 2010, we identified following institutions that kept winning positions, despite the change in algortihms:

(position January 2009 - position July 2009 - position January 2010 - region - repo name)
85 83 38 NA Cornell University eCommons
53 36 17 EU INIST I-Revues
122 82 64 AS Nagasaki University Academic Output
79 49 36 IBC Biblioteca Digital Jurídica do Superior Tribunal de Justica
140 99 87 NA Rice University Scholarship
63 54 43 EU Digital CSIC
135 122 113 EU Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Lirias Repository<http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=410508203767&h=836a1f20598efdb0eacdce370b8907b7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fatmire.com%2Flirias.php>
31 27 26 NA Ohio State University Knowledge Bank