Discoverability and Search Engine Visibility of Repository Platforms

• Main Authors: Dong, Danping, Tay, Aaron
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: institutional repositories; data repositories; discoverability; search engines; standardized metrics; repository usage; search engine optimization; aggregators; Unpaywall; Digital Commons; Figshare; Scholarly Communication
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/library_research/208; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/library_research/article/1213/viewcontent/Chapter_8_Final_AM_forInK.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

It is of increasing interest and importance to understand the discoverability of content hosted on institutional repositories (IRs) and data repositories beyond the library context and on the wider web, as IRs play a significant role in promoting and disseminating the research outputs of an institution. This chapter provides an overview of early studies on IR discoverability in search engines, discusses standardized metrics for repository usage and ways to monitor search engine optimization, and provides practical suggestions to expose IR content to non-Google indexes and aggregators, such as Unpaywall. The second part of this chapter presents a case study and research experiment designed to compare the discoverability and search engine visibility of two hosted repository solutions, Digital Commons and Figshare. No statistically significant differences were found between the two platforms in attracting downloads to deposited academic publications.