Impressive numbers and relevance for the Research Collection in 2021
The ETH Zurich publication platform continuously proves its importance to researchers in all fields. Current statistics show the number of downloads and open access entries rose again last year.
Breaking records
Last year, we reported that we had set a new record for article downloads in 2020. And we are doing the same this year – the total number of downloads in 2021 increased by 36% (almost 290,000 downloads) compared to 2020. Of course, one reason for this increase is the fact that the amount of open-access records available in the Research Collection grows every year. In fact, 2021 was the first year that the percentage of open-access records was higher than that of metadata records. We are only missing 3% to get to 50% for 2020 – and we would really appreciate it if you could help us reach that figure by uploading your full texts.
Rankings
What is interesting is that rankings of the locations from which downloads were made changed this year. In 2021, a total of 400,000 more downloads from the USA were recorded than in the previous year. This sees Germany move down to second place, still ahead of China, Switzerland and Russia.
Dominance
Another interesting point to note is that the article with the highest altmetric score back in 2020 was on the subject of climate change. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, nothing has changed in this regard for 2021. The research report itself also deals with the subject of setting new records – but in a more negative sense: external page “Increasing probability of record-shattering climate extremes”.
There is one doctoral thesis that has regularly topped the rankings since the statistics were first recorded: external page “Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen“ – the groundbreaking 17-page 1905 essay by one of ETH Zurich’s most famous alumni: Albert Einstein.
Groundbreaking
Breaking ground is also quite literally the subject of the dataset with the most downloads in 2021: external page “Dataset from the shake table tests of free-standing rocking bodies”. The data relates to earthquake research, modelling and simulation.
The high level of interest in this article is a strong indicator that the publication of research data is becoming increasingly important and that the publication volume of this type of publication is growing.
The Research Collection is the publication platform of ETH Zurich. University members can use it to publish academic full texts on an open-access basis, as well as to archive research data or to make these available to the public.