[T]he three first ranks go to "thematic" (i.e., discipline- or or subject-based) Central Repositories (CRs): (1) Arxiv (Physics), (2) Repec (Economics) and (3) E-Lis (Library Science). That is to be expected, because such CRs are fed from institutions all over the world.
But the fourth-ranked repository -- and the first of the university-based Institutional Repositories (IRs), displaying only its own institutional output -- is (4) U Southampton EPrints (even though Southampton's University rank is 77th).
Moreover, the fifteenth place repository -- and the first of the department-based IRs -- is (15) U Southampton ECS EPrints (making it 10th ranked even relative to university-wide IRs!).
None of this is surprising: ...Southampton's ECS...adopted the world's firstGreen OA self-archiving mandate, now also being emulated worldwide....
But these repository rankings (by Webometrics as well as by ROAR) should be interpreted with caution, because not all the CRs and IRs contain full-texts. Some only contain metadata....
[T]he university-wide mandate that U. Southampton has since adopted still has not been officially announced or implemented....
[T]he moral of the story is that what Southampton is right now enjoying is not just the well-earned visibility of its research output, but also a competitive advantage over other institutions, because of its head-start, both in creating IRs and in adopting a mandate to fill them....
I am not saying all this by way of bragging! I am begging other institutions to take advantage of the fact that it's still early days: Get a competitive head start too -- by creating an IR, and, most important of all, by adopting a Green OA self-archiving mandate!
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/09/2008 11:34:00 AM.
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.
