The University of Alicante's Repository at the top of the rankings in its 5th anniversary. University News

The University of Alicante's Repository at the top of the rankings in its 5th anniversary

Alicante, 13th March 2012

The University of Alicante's Institutional Repository (RUA) is five years now with usage statistics and a raise in quality, supported by top international rankings in repository positioning. The latest data in the world rankings of last January 2012, placed the UA Repository in the 3rd position among Spanish universities, only surpassed by the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

The same ranking, produced by the Cybermetrics Lab CSIC, places it in the fourth position of Repositories in Spain (not only those from universities) and the 42th-ranked Institutional Repositories in the world. The 2011 Ranking placed the UA Repository in the 81th postion and in twelve months it has risen 39 posts. Among the parameters used by the international rankings, they take into account the number of articles and published materials as well as the visibility of all those files.

In just five years, the RUA has added more than 18,000 materials. There have been almost nine million downloads from 222 different countries, which has led it to reach national and international positioning supporting its excellent management by the UA Library and its enormous potential in the internationalization of the institution. This work is framed within the commitment made by the University of Alicante to use open knowledge according to the Berlin Declaration calling for the scientific production to be available on the Internet for free and whose spirit has been also collected in the Act on Science, Technology and Innovation.

To celebrate the fifth anniversary and the good results, those people responsible for RUA, under the Office of the Vice President for Educational Innovation and Technology, led by Faraón Llorens, have redesigned the Repository website incorporating significant improvements both to simplify its use by researchers, teachers and administrative staff and to facilitate searches by users, as well as to ensure accessibility to the content. Apart from the visual improvement of the site, it sis worth mentioning the connection of the Repository to with the Virtual Campus, browsing in different languages, connection with social networks and the improvement of search tools and content display, among others.

Repository of the University of Alicante

RUA provides open access to full-text digital documents generated by the members of the University of Alicante as a result of their teaching and research activities.

The aim of RUA is to give greater visibility to the scientific and teaching materials at the University, increase impact and ensure the preservation of this production.

RUA compiles all kinds of digital materials, both preprints and postprints, conference papers, working papers, teaching materials and learning objects, journals published by the University of Alicante, as well as documents and materials related to the institutional activity performed by its centres, units and services.