[Dspace-general] Week 2: Statistics

[Paul Needham]

Hi Dorothea

>From my perspective, this week's topic is timely as I've just started work
on the JISC-funded PIRUS (Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage
Statistics) Project, which runs until the end of this year.

The aim of the project is to develop COUNTER-compliant usage reports at the
individual article level that can be implemented by any entity  (publisher,
aggregator, IR, etc.,) that hosts online journal articles and will enable
the usage of research outputs to be recorded, reported and consolidated at a
global level in a standard way.

We have identified the relevant statistics stakeholders as:

* STM publishing community
* IR managers
* Individual researchers
* Research library directors
* HE/FE research funding agencies
* Board of COUNTER

We are only in the early stages of our research at the moment, but, by the
end of the year, hope to be in a position to propose a format for
COUNTER-compliant usage reports, together with supporting protocols, and
submit this to COUNTER for approval as a new standard, to be adopted and
maintained by COUNTER.

Of course, this represents only one part of the wider IR statistics
landscape but may be something useful to throw into the mix!

Wearing another hat, as someone helping to run Cranfield University's IR
(Cranfield CERES), I would echo other comments that have been made on the
need for stats on a per-author and per-school/department basis, as well as
various 'Top Ten' lists.

Regards
Paul

____________________________
Paul A S Needham
Research & Innovation Specialist
Kings Norton Library
Cranfield University
Cranfield
MK43 0AL
  

-----Original Message-----
From: dspace-general-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:dspace-general-bounces at mit.edu]
On Behalf Of Dorothea Salo
Sent: 25 August 2008 14:09
To: dspace; DSpace Tech-List
Subject: [Dspace-general] Week 2: Statistics

Greetings, DSpace community,

I want to thank everyone once again for last week's stimulating
discussion and impressive chat turnout! I have a new question for
everyone this week, pursuant to some discussion on the lists:

"Statistics" are one of the commonest requests for a new DSpace
feature. Without further specification, however, it's hard to know
what data to present, since there are no standards or even clear best
practices in this area. What statistics do the following groups of
DSpace users need to see, and in what form are the statistics best
presented to them?

Depositors
End-users (defined as "people examining items and downloading
bitstreams from a DSpace instance;" we may have to refine this further
in discussion)
DSpace repository managers (as distinct from systems administrators)

What else should developers keep in mind as they implement this feature?

Because it would be nice to reach a working consensus on this (unlike
last week's question, which was intended to pull out as broad a
selection of needs as possible), I think we should start discussing
immediately. I encourage all respondents to respond TO THE MAILING
LIST instead of to me.

I will be holding another chat to discuss the weekly question. It will
take place Wednesday 27 August in the DSpace IRC chatroom, #dspace on
irc.freenode.net. I apologize to West Coast (USA) community members
for last week's unconscionably early hour; we'll try 10 am US Central
(11 am Eastern, 4 pm GMT) this week, and we may go even later next
week if our European community members can stand it.

For those who don't normally use IRC, there are two easy web gateways.
One is mibbit.com; the other is specific to our channel and can be
found at <http://dspace.testathon.net/cgi-bin/irc.cgi>. I encourage
all of us to become familiar with the channel; it is a source of
real-time technical information from DSpace developers, as well as a
community in its own right.

Dorothea

-- 
Dorothea Salo dsalo at library.wisc.edu
Digital Repository Librarian AIM: mindsatuw
University of Wisconsin
Rm 218, Memorial Library
(608) 262-5493
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