OSU Scholars Archive Ranks Among World’s Best

ScholarsArchive@OSU, a digital archive for scholarly writings, rates among the top institutional repositories in the world.

Achieving its highest ratings yet in January 2010, OSU came in fourth nationally and 16th internationally on Web-o-Metrics Institutional Repository rankings. Only three U.S. universities — MIT (which designed the repository software), Michigan and Tufts — outranked Oregon State.

Last year alone, more than 3,500 items were added to ScholarsArchive@OSU, including Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses by OSU students, Extension and Experiment Station Communication technical reports and faculty articles. “This year, ScholarsArchive is on pace to add nearly 5,500 items,” says Sue Kunda, OSU’s digital production librarian.

In February, OSU’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS) became the first oceanography college in the world to implement an open-access policy. By the end of March, COAS articles had been downloaded more than 8,000 times.

Launched in early 2005, ScholarsArchive now attracts more than 2,500 visitors daily. “We get a surprising number from the third world — India, Africa, places where they’re unable to access research if it’s only available through journals,” reports Michael Boock, head of Digital Access Services for OSU Libraries.

Find more information at http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/jspui/index.jsp