Published: 13 Feb 2017 Source: University Relations Office (URO)
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) institutional repository for research, KNUSTSpace, is eleventh in the African category of the world ranking of repositories. KNUST moved up in the Africa rankings from 44th in 2016 to 11th in January 2017, according to the ranking of repositories published by Webometrics.
Out of 74 repositories in the continental rankings, KNUST’s position puts KNUSTSpace among the best repositories in Africa and the first in West Africa. This remarkable move in rankings reflects the growing number of researchers using the KNUST repository. However, KNUSTSpace placed 616th in the world ranking.
The aim of the ranking, according to Webometrics, is to support Open Access Initiatives (OAI) and therefore the free access to scientific publications and other academic material in electronic form. The web indicators are used here to measure the global visibility and impact of scientific repositories.
A set of metrics based on web prescence, impact and usage are used as indicators for the ranking. The ranking is built on indicators obtained from web search engines following a model close to the impact factor. The activity accounts for 50% of the index, including number of pages, pdf files and items in the Google Scholar database. The visibility takes into account the external links received by the repository (the other 50%).
The ranking organization therefore encourages the web publication as a way to communicate both formal and informal scholarly material, maintaining high standards of the peer review processes. Websites reach much larger potential audiences, offering access to scientific knowledge to researchers and institutions located in developing countries and also to third parties (economic, industrial, political or cultural stakeholders) in their own community.
In an exclusive interview, Mr. Richard Bruce Lamptey, the Head of the Research Commons Unit of the Prempeh II Library, encouraged researchers to upload their publications and research works into the repository to improve KNUST’s ranking and visibility.