Statistics on the Usage of REpositories (SURE)
One of the advantages of making a publication available on the Internet (with Open Access) is that you can keep track of how often the publication has been viewed and downloaded. But there are many ways of keeping track of statistics. And how do you know whether the publication has been viewed by an actual human being and not just by a robot?
In SURFshare’s "SURE" project (Statistics on the Usage of REpositories, guidelines have been developed for the creation and the exchange of statistics about the usage of publications in repositories. A central database has also been developed that collects, analyses, and presents usage data. This makes it possible for the NARCIS research portal to present user statistics for each publication so that the data for the various repositories can be compared.
Results
In the SURFshare’s SURE project (Statistics on the Usage of REpositories), Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam, VU University Amsterdam, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) have agreed on guidelines and have developed software applications which can standardise usage data and which can transfer these to a central database.
- Generic, system-independent, software which can transfer the log data from local repositories to the central database, on the basis of the guidelines that have been agreed on in the SURE project.
- Software for a central database (log aggregator) that collects the usage data for the various repositories
- A central database that collects, analyses, and normalises all the log files and presents them per publication or document.
- A service catalogue with an overview of the services that can be offered on the basis of the statistics. NARCIS uses such a service to display the statistics per publication.
- A business plan which explains how the national service for the provision of statistics can be maintained in a sustainable way.
- An international robot filter list; this makes it possible to distinguish between human users and machines. Robots are filtered from the statistics so that the data is normalised .
The project results can also be found here.
Who is it for?
The results of the SURE project will allow repository managers and administrators to offer statistical services for researchers and other end users.
Examples
An example of such a statistical service is provided by the results of the Leiden Open Access grassroots project, which preceded the SURE project. The Leiden project involved experimenting with sending e mails to scientists giving usage statistics. Authors were sent regular updates about their own publications in the repository and the number of times they had been viewed or downloaded. This service is greatly appreciated.
An important result of the SURE project is that the statistical data from Leiden University are comparable with those from Maastricht University, for example.
The future
The next step is for all the Dutch universities to implement the agreed arrangements and utilise the tool. If all the universities implement SURE, NARCIS will be able to provide statistics covering all publications. This will allow every university researcher in the Netherlands to see how often his/her publication has been viewed or downloaded.
International
The SURE project partners are contributing their experiences to comparable projects in the context of Knowledge Exchange. The European OpenAire project also make use of the results of the SURE project.
