[BOAI] Ranking of repositories

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Isidro F. Aguillo, via the AmSci OA Forum.  --Peter Suber.]


 The second edition of the 2011 Ranking Web of Repositories has been
published at the end of July.  It is available from the Webometrics portal:

http://repositories.webometrics.info/


The number of repositories is growing fast, especially in academic
institutions from developing countries. As in previous editions the subject
repositories still appear in the top positions, with large institutional
ones following them.


There are no relevant changes in this edition, but the editors are making a
plea to the Open Access community regarding a few aspects related to
intellectual property issues.


The papers and other documents deposited in institutional repositories are
probably the main asset of those institutions. As important as giving free
access to others is the proper recognition of the authorship of the
scientific documents. Unfortunately a few institutions are hosting their
repositories in websites outside the main webdomain of its organization and
many repositories are recommending to use systems like handle and others
purl-like URLs for citing (linking) the deposited items. This means that
moral rights regarding institutional authorship are ignored, relevant
information about authors is missed and the semantic possibilities of the
web address are not explored.


Nowadays it is already common to add the URL address of the full text
document in the bibliographic references of the published papers. Logically
the link to the full text in the institutional repository can be used for
that purpose, but researchers are facing options that ignore their
institutional affiliation, with strange meaningless codes, prone to typos or
other mistakes and pointing to metadata pages not to the full text
documents. Obviously for authors it could be more profitable to host the
papers in their personal pages instead doing it in institutional
repositories whose naming policies have relevant copyright issues.


Our position is that end-users should be taken into account, that web
addresses are going to place in important role in citing behavior, that
citations are the key tool for evaluation of authors, that institutions are
investing large amounts of money in their repositories in exchange of
prestige and impact and that providing permanent address is the duty of the
institution, nor responsibility of external third-parties.


Comments are welcomed




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Isidro F. Aguillo, HonPhD

The Cybermetrics Lab
IPP-CCHS-CSIC
Albasanz, 26-28 (3C1)
28037 Madrid. Spain

isidro.aguillo @ cchs.csic.es

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