The original aim of the Ranking was to promote Web publication, not to rank institutions. Supporting Open Access initiatives, electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material are our primary targets. However web indicators are very useful for ranking purposes too as they are not based on number of visits or page design but global performance and visibility of the universities....
The Web covers not only only formal (e-journals, repositories) but also informal scholarly communication....
The January 2008 edition includes "a completely new Repositories Ranking according to the webometrics criteria for classifying all the institutional and thematic repositories with an autonomous web domain or subdomain."
Comments
This ranking rewards progressive OA policies rather than other strengths, and it's fascinating to see how this alters the conventional standings. For example, under last year's rankings, Stevan Harnad pointed out that the University of Southampton was "6th in UK, 9th in Europe, and 80th among the top 3000 universities." This year it's 5th in the UK, 13th in Europe, and 77th among the top 4000.
Unfortunately the link to the repositories ranking is dead at the moment, at least for me. But I'd assume that the problem is temporary and keep trying.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
