Annual growth figures now available

Just a quick post to let everyone know that I have now collated our latest batch of statistical data which means we now have growth figures covering a full 12 month period. Overall, we have seen a very healthy 43.73% growth in the number of items within our repositories over the past year - well done all!

2010 Ranking Web of Repositories

The second edition of 2010 Ranking Web of Repositories has been published:
http://repositories.webometrics.info/

Close to 1000 repositories have been analyzed this year and the top 800 are ranked here according to their web presence and visibility. The aim of this ranking is to support Open Access initiatives and therefore the free access to scientific publications in an electronic form and to other academic material. The web indicators are used here to measure the global visibility and impact of the scientific repositories. Two lists are available - top 800 and top 800 institutional.

I've done a bit of trawling and number crunching on the institutional list extracting both a ranked list for UK only institutional repositories, and a subset of those Welsh repositories that appear in the list. Of the top 800 institutional repositories globally the UK has 82 entries and Wales has five entries from those. Details:

International rank (UK rank in brackets)

257 (18th in UK) Aberystwyth
601 (62nd in UK) Bangor
696 (73rd in UK) Glamorgan
730 (78th in UK) UWIC
752 (80th in UK) Trinity

DSpace Add-Ons

The following are descriptions of a range of DSpace add-ons available to install which provide additional functionality to the software.

Commenting
The commenting feature brings informal communication capabilities to the DSpace environment. A threaded forum, or comments stream, can be attached to any web-page, community, collection, submitted item or e-person within DSpace. The add-on allows comments to be inserted by both anonymous users and authenticated ones while functionality for reviewing/moderating comments is also provided.

An example (in Portuguese) of comments appearing below a collection.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Controlled Vocabulary/Ontology
This add-on applies a subject classification system of the institutions choice to their DSpace instance. Once implemented the user chooses from the predefined taxonomy of keywords to describe items of information that are being submitted to the repository and that same taxonomy is used to find and access items held in the repository.

An example (in Portuguese) of a subject classification system in use.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Dublin Core Meta Toolkit
The Dublin Core Meta Toolkit gives DSpace administrators the ability to convert large amounts of information from their desktop database programs into DSpace compatible Dublin Core metadata. The toolkit provides a number of out-of-the-box database structures to ease data collection as well as enabling users to create custom converters for existing databases. The Toolkit is ideal for converting formats from Microsoft Access, MySQL and comma delimited value (CSV).

Compatible with DSpace 1.5.1


Embargo
Content submitted to a repository may be restricted by laws, policies, or contractual obligations that require the submitter not to publish or enable public access to the content for a period of time.This add-on allows DSpace administrators to build in functionality to handle embargoed items in the workflow. It allows for the metadata of the embargoed item to be indexed and viewed, but the full text of the item cannot be retrieved while the embargo is in force.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x, 1.5.x and 1.6


Format validator and virus check
This add-on provides rough-and-ready format checking by identifying that the file/bitstream extension matches formats verifiable by JHOVE. Currently DSpace accepts a deposit's file extension as gospel, so a user could tack a .txt extension onto a GIF and DSpace would assign the incorrect format to the file based on that incorrect extension. It also checks the file for the presence of viruses.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x


Recommendation
This DSpace content-based recommendation feature automatically shows links to articles within the repository that a user is likely to be interested in by mapping items related to the document currently being visualized by the user. Similar to functionality seen on Amazon this feature can greatly improve user experience.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Request Copy
This add-on creates a semi-automated mechanism whereby would-be users can request and authors can email an individual copy of a full-text deposited within the repository whose full-text access privileges are set to restricted.

The purpose of this feature is to increase both the content deposited in an IR and its immediate usability by providing a way to accommodate the (frequently unfounded) worries of authors and their institutions about copyright infringement during any publisher embargo periods on public self-archiving.

The link is provided on all non-OA items and activates a form where the user requester must enter his/her email address and name, and may add a comment, and press a 'Request-a-copy' button. An email is sent to the depositor and the email message contains a token. Using that token, the author may reply, by just clicking in one of the two buttons available: 'Send Copy', 'Don't send copy'.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x


Semantic Search for DSpace
Semantic Search allows intelligent search of DSpace content, using Semantic Web technologies and performs knowledge discovery on DSpace metadata. Semantic Search uses the science of meaning in language, to produce highly relevant search results.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Statistics
This add-on allows gathering, processing and presenting usage, content and administrative statistics from the repository. The system is based on components that can easily be configured, changed or extended, to respond to different information needs.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x (JSPUI)


Tombstoning
The add-on allows a tombstone to be added when an item is withdrawn from the repository. The user selects from 3 reasons for withdrawing the item: 1. Removed from view by legal order; 2. Removed from view by the [authority doing removal]; 3. Removed from view at request of the author.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x


Further details about this range of options are available here. Any WRN partner interested in discussing or investigating any of these DSpace add-ons should contact the team using the usual address wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

Statistical Evaluation

The WRN project team is currently looking in some depth at evaluating our project activities. We are concerned with gathering both non-numerical qualitative data to analyse about our activities (stories/opinions and narratives from our users) alongside some more quantitative statistical measures about repositories and their use across Wales.

Surprisingly, the collection of the statistical aspect of our evaluation data - something we originally envisaged as being the quick and easy stuff to generate - has proved to be quite problematic. Establishing a base line set of measures has been difficult with varying data coming out of everyone's systems and a lack of consistency in obtaining measures for central recording purposes. Even the most basic measure of all, i.e. how many deposits are recorded each quarter in each repository, can be difficult to obtain and we are only just managing to make this measure something we accurately record in 100% of the repositories across Wales.

So, while we hear lots of stories about the power of statistics and the help they can offer in making a case for a repository, it seems that we still have some work to do to convince people it is worth the effort of setting up robust statistical measures. We thought we'd try and address this by providing information about a selection of basic options open to most repository managers. The following information, from the Digital Repositories InfoKit, provides an overview of some of the most commonly employed methods of collecting statistics:

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/repositories/management-framework/usage-statistics

Any WRN partner interested in reviewing their statistics and collection methods, or needing assistance in setting up any of the tools mentioned here, should contact the project team via the usual email at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

Heading in the right direction - new statistics now in!

I have finished processing the latest batch of statistics from our project partners and I am happy to report we have seen an improvement in the total growth rates for our repositories for the three months October through to December 2009.

Growth rate Jul - Sep 2009 = 12.47%
Growth rate Oct - Dec 2009 = 13.84%

The figure we use to calculate these rates is the total number of items appearing in each of the Welsh repositories. Detailed figures are as follows:



Keep up the good work everyone!

Statistics follow up

Following on from previous posts about statistics and how to use them there have been a few more ideas circulating the community which I thought we'd share with you:

Firstly, Jenny Delasalle from Warwick has posted some further thoughts on using Google Analytics on the WRAP Repository Blog . The idea of sending out monthly email communications to the authors of the top downloads from within the repository is an inspiring way of generating institutional awareness of your content.

Secondly, William Nixon of Enlighten has shared the methods he uses with Google Analytics to create a top 100 list of search terms and phrases which they then promote on their repository. Full details appeared on the UKCoRR mailing list.

Please contact us via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk if you'd like to learn more about using Google Analytics with your repository.

Statistics

Do you want to demonstrate the importance of your repository?
Do you want to demonstrate the global impact of the content you are collecting?
Do you want to know who is visiting your repository, where they come from and how they find you?

Statistics can help!

Collecting and analysing usage statistics can greatly help institutions demonstrate the world-wide impact of their repository and can help justify the input of effort required to gather that ever elusive content! Nicky Cashman, Repository Advisor at Aberystwyth University, has recently used the reporting tools in Google Analytics to create a usage report for AU's institutional repository Cadair.


Screen shot of Cadair statistical report

The report contains a selection of the 'big picture' repository statistics alongside name checks for the top downloads and contributors, and a selection of postive feedback and comments from repository users. The format is brief but it gets across the key messages in an eye catching way, especially with the use of colourful graphs and charts. Nicky will be producing these reports on a regular basis and is planning to use them in various forums where the repository is under discussion, including meetings with senior managers and decision makers. A copy of Nicky's full statistical report is available in the WRN document store on our web site. If any partners want more information about using and exploiting statistics, or want assistance getting Google Analytics up and running on their repository, please just email WRN the team.

Finally, it seems appropriate to add to this post the results of the recent WRN statistical census that we undertook. Between July and October 2009 we have seen just over a 12% growth in the number of items contained within the Welsh repositories. A table showing individual growth rates across this first reporting period appears below.



Fingers crossed we can build on these figures over the coming months.