SciELO Brasil remains the leader among scientific publication portals

The electronic library funded by Bireme and FAPESP continues in first place in the visibility ranking for scientific repositories on the main internet search engines.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) Brasil continues to be the leader among the largest free, open access portals of scientific information worldwide.

This title follows the release of the new Ranking Web of World Repositories, known as Webometrics, which measures the visibility of repositories of scientific information on the main internet search engines.

SciELO, the result of a project financed by FAPESP in partnership with the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME), remained in first place of the Top Open Access Portals in the ranking released by Spain’s Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).
 
The collection of Brazilian periodicals, SciELO Brasil, has been first in the ranking for two consecutive years, beginning in July 2011.

According to Abel Packer of the SciELO coordination team, the achievement is the result of a strategy that has been implemented since SciELO was launched in 1998: to maximize its presence and content in every reference index of scientific information on the internet.

“This shows the value that the Brazilian collection of scientific periodicals has in terms of content, presence and impact. It represents the recognition of the efforts of FAPESP and all of SciELO’s partners to improve the quality of the collection as a whole and of each of its periodicals,” Packer told Agência FAPESP.

To determine the ranking, CSIC utilizes the number of pages indexed in collections of periodicals on internet search engines, such as Google, in addition to the number of external links that lead to the service, which are measured using a methodology developed by Yahoo Site Explorer.

Other indicators utilized in the ranking are the number of articles in PDF, DOC and PS formats (so-called rich files) extracted from the main search engines and the number of recent articles published on Google Scholar from 2006 to 2010.

According to the latter two criteria, SciELO Brasil achieved third place. “The Brazilian collection has uniformly good performance in the four indicators, and we hope this balance in its internet presence in terms of data, number of pages and scientific articles continues in the coming years. But the visibility of SciELO’s periodicals, which occupies first place, is the most important indicator for us,” says Packer.

“The outstanding presence on Google Scholar will also help to maintain SciELO’s competitive position in the future,” he adds. In addition to the Brazilian collection, the SciELO network occupied 11 of the 62 positions for portals listed in the ranking.

High-ranking collections

SciELO Chile, which is one of the pioneers in methodology and, along with SciELO Brasil, is one of the network’s model collections, achieved the sixth-place ranking.

SciELO Public Health, the global health collection coordinated by BIREME, moved up two notches to eighth place in the ranking.

Other collections in the SciELO network classified in the ranking were Spain (11th place); Argentina (17th);  Cuba (18th); Mexico, which debuted in the ranking at 23rd place; Peru (27th); South Africa (31st); Uruguay (35th); Costa Rica (40th); Portugal (45th); and Colombia (53rd).
   
The Brasiliana collection, coordinated by Universidade de São Paulo (USP), was ranked at 46th place.
According to Packer, the new challenge for SciELO, which will have been on the Webometrics ranking for 15 years in 2013, is to remain competitive with other collections “fighting” for the top spot.

“China’s collection of periodicals, for example, which is seventh in the current ranking and obtained first place in the indicators of size and presence on Google Scholar, will probably be very competitive in the future if it improves its ‘number of files’ indicator,” Packer affirms.