Open Research Online

Counting downloads of research outputs archived in ORO provides the University and its researchers with a measure of dissemination for the University’s research.

Since the beginning of the ORO service Library Services has used Google Analytics to count downloads of research outputs archived in ORO. These counts have been communicated monthly in the form of a Top 15 of most downloaded outputs.  In January 2013, Library Services joined the Institution Repository Usage Statistics (IRUS) project which provides download statistics for ORO.  A comparison of statistics collected by the IRUS project and our standard method of using Google Analytics reveals that Google Analytics only records a small percentage of actual downloads from ORO. 

Investigations indicate that Google Analytics does not collect all download activity from ORO.   Notification of downloads may not always be received by (or sent to Google Analytics) and Google Analytics may only be reporting on downloads direct from the ORO website (e.g. not direct downloads from Google or Google Scholar).

For the purposes of the July top 15 monthly downloads Google Analytics and IRUS statistics will be run in parallel.  Starting from August we will only report the IRUS statistics.  Researchers can expect to see a significant rise in the number of downloads recorded for their research outputs and potential changes to the Top 15 positions.

Benefits of the move to IRUS will be:

• Reliable statistics which conform to a library and publishing standard
• Researchers will see a significant rise in the download counts for their research outputs
• Download counts provide a metric for measuring the impact of your research

If you have any questions or queries please contact the ORO team at lib-oro@open.ac.uk

Chris Biggs, ORO Administrator, Library Services

Here is a Top 10 of request for copies from ORO from January to June 2013: ORO 2013 request a copies.  This lists the most popular items in ORO where a full text is not publicly downloadable.

The top item has had 161 requests which is a tremendous figure.  Compared to the downloads recorded by Google Analytics only one item has more requests / downloads over the same 6 month period. 

Given the extra effort required to request, rather than download, an item through ORO it’s a great indicator of research dissemination.  Congratulations and thanks to Rebecca!

Chris

The Top 15 Downloads as counted by Google Analytics are here ORO-top-15-June-2013.

What’s interesting is that we have 5 theses in the list, which I believe to be most we’ve ever had in the Top 15.  We had 2 last month so it will be interesting if this trend continues.

Thanks for using ORO.

Chris

ORO Administrator, Library Services

Researchers are increasingly being expected to record the details of research outputs associated with an externally funded project in external systems (such as the Research Outcomes System and Researchfish).

OU researchers are already expected to record their research outputs in ORO.  So, rather than re-key the data into external systems it would be desirable to export this data from ORO.  In order to achieve this we are restructuring the existing funder field in ORO to allow data to be exported from ORO into external systems.

The Funder field will now comprise a Funder name, a Project name and Project ID.  To aid data entry we have implemented predictive text against a set of know funded projects, but you will also be able to enter a project that is not recorded in this dataset.  The field is not mandatory but it is in everyone’s interest to populate this field whenever appropriate as it should save re-keying data at a later date!

Over the next few months we will be migrating data from the existing Funder field to the new fields and working with researchers to ensure this data is correctly recorded in ORO to ensure effective export of data.

Any questions, please mail the ORO mailbox at lib-oro@open.ac.uk

Chris Biggs

ORO Team, Library Services