Open Research Online

February generally saw fewer downloads due to the short month, with the usual exception of Jan Draper’s book chapter.

ORO top 15 Feb 2013

Top downloads for August.  Several new faces this month in the 21 items that comprise the list. ORO-downloads-11-08

Most dowloaded items in ORO for July are available.  Good mix of new and familiar this month. 

July Downloads

Here are the top downloads from ORO for June. Social Sciences have just pipped IET to the most entries.

ORO-downloads-11-06

Here are the top downloads from ORO for April - I blame the lower overall numbers on the Easter break. I have included information on risers and fallers and year to date – let me know if you find this information useful as it does take a while to compile: ORO-downloads-11-04.

After a long hiatus, the ‘most downloaded’ feature is back! As there has been a few months’ break we are starting again from scratch, so there will be no risers and fallers or total downloads this month. Please click through to the full list: ORO-downloads-11-03-ver2

By popular demand, it’s a return to a Top 15 this month. For the first time, it’s a PhD thesis that tops the downloads. Click here for the full list: ORO downloads 10_2010.

Prompted by there being four in this month’s top downloads, I’m going to use this post to remind people about eTheses. Supervisors: if you have any students close to completion, encourage them to think about depositing an e-version of their thesis in ORO. Also, if you have copies of past students’ theses that you want to make more accessible, consider depositing these too. Remember to ask the author’s permission first though, assuming you are still in touch with the person. ORO takes PhD, EdD and MPhil theses, and it really is a great way to make these hidden treasures of research more openly available and more widely used. What’s more, eTheses in ORO will soon be regularly “harvested” by the British Library’s EThOS service, generating even more visibility for our postgraduate research. More information is available in the ORO help pages: http://oro.open.ac.uk/help/helpeth.html. Meanwhile, back to topic, here is the complete list of top downloads for August: ORO downloads 08_2010.

Twelve of the articles featured in this month’s top downloads have a publication date of 2010, with two of those twelve being “in press” items. This demonstrates nicely the role ORO can play in getting your work “out there” as early as possible. This can be very useful, for example, if a journal has a very long lead-time to publication, or perhaps doesn’t have an “early view / in press” section to its website.

Aside from that, I think a special mention should be given to Professor Grainne Conole (IET), who has no less than four journal papers in this month’s list! Also, an embarrassed apology from the ORO Team for featuring in the list ourselves… it seems our contribution to the recent Open Repositories Conference in Madrid has been quite well downloaded!

Click here for the complete list: ORO downloads 07_2010.

The focus of attention this month is on science…

I’ve commented previously on this blog about the apparent lack of science articles making it into the most-downloaded stats. So, it is very pleasing indeed to see not one, but three journal articles from the science faculty making into June’s figures. Also pleasing is the fact that all three of these papers are very recently published; in fact, two are still “in press”. This highlights the important role institutional repositories can play in getting research “out there” as early as possible. Yes, most science journals now have “in press” or “early view” areas of their journals online, but you still need a subscription to see them.

Here’s the complete list: ORO downloads 06_2010a.