The link between dissertation metadata completeness and user engagement in an institutional repository

Behrooz Rasuli (), Michael Boock (), Joachim Schöpfel () and Brenda Wyk ()
Additional contact information
Behrooz Rasuli: Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology (IranDoc)
Michael Boock: Oregon State University
Joachim Schöpfel: University of Lille
Brenda Wyk: The University of Pretoria

Scientometrics, 2025, vol. 130, issue 5, No 15, 2875-2899

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the role of metadata quality in Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), focusing on its completeness and its impact on discoverability and user engagement within institutional repositories (IRs). Using DSpace@MIT as a case study, the current research analyzed 22,276 doctoral dissertations to assess metadata completeness and its correlation with the number of views and downloads. Various metadata fields and usage statistics were extracted for detailed analysis. The study identified a moderate positive correlation between the numbers of unique metadata fields and both the Department Views Ratio (DVR) and Department Download Ratio (DDR), suggesting that enriched metadata can improve the visibility and accessibility of dissertations. Additionally, the length of abstracts is positively correlated with engagement metrics (significance level for all reported results

Keywords: Visibility; Bibliometrics; Open repository; Open science; Altmetrics; Research impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-025-05331-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:130:y:2025:i:5:d:10.1007_s11192-025-05331-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-025-05331-0

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().