Análise do uso de conteúdo disponível em repositórios institucionais de instituições de ensino superior ibero-americanas: um estudo cientométrico na base Scopus

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the use of available content in institutional repositories of Ibero- American higher education institutions and their impact on the production of new knowledge, considering the assumptions of the Open Access and Green Open Access strategy. It has as corpus the Scopus scientific database and time frame the 15 years of the Open Access Movement (2002-2016). The institutional repositories of higher education institutions in Brazil and Portugal are highlighted, analyzing theses and dissertations in more detail. It is justified in the fundamental role of institutional repositories as a source of information in open access for the production of new knowledge and for the advancement of the Open Access Movement. Also considering the commemoration of the 15 years of the Movement, it is time to evaluate the impact of this resource for scientific production. From the point of view of Information Science, the research is contextualized in the field of information metric studies, more specifically in scientometric studies. The methodological procedures used were empirical, with a quantitative approach and descriptive nature. The data for this research were collected in the OpenDOAR and ROAR directories and in the Scopus database, considering the period from 2002 to 2016. The results confirm the success of the Open Access Movement in the expansion of the number of repositories institutions, but also ratify their low population. During the 15 years of the Open Access Movement, the use of the contents of the institutional repositories of Ibero-American higher education institutions showed significant annual growth, emphasizing that Brazilian repositories presented the best indexes. The results show that the greatest recognition for the contents of these repositories comes from their own institutions that concentrate the largest number of citations. The majority of the cites are affiliated to universities, they carry out research in the Social Sciences, in collaboration with Spanish, Brazilian and Portuguese authors within the Ibero-American bloc and, outside the bloc, with American and English authors. There is a significant commitment by the citers to the principles of the Open Access Movement, since they use open access sources to obtain information and publish the results of their research also in open access sources. In Brazil, USP Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations and theses and dissertations stand out in relation to the interest of the scientific community. In Portugal, the RepositoriUM of the University of Minho excelled in number of citations, but theses and dissertations were not the most interesting publications, other documentary types received more citations in the period. The Repository Impact Factor indicator proposed in this research showed that the USP Digital Theses and Dissertations Library and the RepositoriUM of the University of Minho were the most influential repositories and demonstrate greater utility for the scientific community, thus promoting greater impact in their productions. Finally, the challenges that still need to be overcome in relation to the settlement and utility of the institutional repositories for the scientific community, actions and projects that aim at the development of a new generation of institutional repositories are highlighting.