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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Bibliometrics of IR deposits

A.I. Bonilla-Calero, Scientometric analysis of a sample of physics-related research output held in the institutional repository Strathprints (2000-2005), Library Review, 57, 9 (2008) pp. 700-721.  (The DOI-based URL does not work.)  Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a “scientometric” analysis of a sample of research output in Physics taken from the institutional repository of the University of Strathclyde (“Strathprints”). The documents in this sample were authored over the period 2000-2005 but were deposited in the repository during the period from publication up to 2007. The paper aims to analyse these data bibliometrically.

Design/methodology/approach – Use was more of open access logs for Strathprints which describe the number of downloads per document, revealing how many countries cite and download each document, and analysing the factors that influence the number of citations and downloads per document. The documents retrieved in Strathprints are described by a variety of indicators delineating levels of activity, collaboration and visibility, which in turn are analysed in order to discern patterns characteristic of the repository.

Findings – The number of documents in this open access repository has increased during the period under consideration, as has the number of authors, centres and countries per document. In terms of institutional origin, unsurprisingly Scottish institutions occupy first or final position in 94 per cent of the total documents. Documents published in 2000 (the earliest documents in the repository) are the most cited. There is a positive correlation between the number of citations and downloads and the number of distinct countries that cite and download. The most cited and downloaded types of documents are articles; post-prints are the most downloaded type of publication. There is no relationship between the journals with the highest average of citations per document in web of science (WoS) and those with the highest number of citations in Strathprints.

Originality/value – Institutional repositories (IRs) are a relatively new phenomenon in the digital library world. Not much in depth analysis of IR statistics has been undertaken to date, so this study is an important attempt to contribute to this new area of research.