Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics
Developing a global standard to enable the recording, reporting and consolidation of online usage statistics for individual journal articles hosted by institutional repositories, publishers and other entities.
Executive Summary
The aim of the Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (PIRUS) project was to develop COUNTER-compliant standards and usage reports at the individual article level that can be implemented by any entity (publisher, aggregator, repository, 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.
The core objectives did not change as PIRUS progressed, but it became apparent in the course of the surveys and desk research carried out in Phase 1 of the project that some of the proposed approaches would have to be modified to take into account the enormous variety of repository technical systems, organisations, management and content. One size does not fit all and more than one approach will have to be offered to repositories if they are to produce COUNTER compliant usage statistics at the individual article level. Different scenarios were developed that will, the project team believe, allow the majority of repositories, as well as publishers, to provide COUNTER-compliant usage statistics at the individual article level.
Main outputs of the project
A proof-of-concept COUNTER-compliant XML prototype for an individual article usage report, Article Report 1: Number of successful full-text article downloads, that can be used by both repositories and publishers. In principle this report could be provided for individual authors and for institutions. In practice, the individual author reports are much easier to generate and are a realistic short-term objective, while the reports for institutions and other entities, such as funding agencies, will be more complex and should be regarded as a longer term objective.
A tracker code, to be implemented by repositories, that sends a message either to an external party that is responsible for creating and consolidating the usage statistics and for forwarding them to the relevant publisher for consolidation or to the local repository server.
A range of Scenarios for the creation, recording and consolidation of individual article usage statistics that will cover the majority of current repository installations . Each repository may select the scenario that corresponds to their technology and implementation.
Specifying criteria for a central facility that will create the usage statistics where required ( for some categories of repository) and collect and consolidate the usage statistics for others
Recommendations of the project team
JISC
PIRUS has demonstrated that it is technically feasible to create, record and consolidate usage statistics for individual articles using data from repositories and publishers. If this is to be translated into a new, implementable COUNTER standard and protocol, further research and development will be required, specifically in the following areas:
- Technical Further tests, with a wider range of repositories and a larger volume of data, will be required to ensure that the proposed protocols and tracker codes are scalable/extensible, work in the major repository environments, and can be applied to items other than articles.
- Organisational The nature and mission of the proposed central clearing house/houses has to be developed, and candidate organisations identified and tested
- Economic Assess the costs for repositories and publishers of generating the required usage reports, as well as the costs of any central clearing house/houses; investigate how these costs could be allocated between stakeholders
- Political The broad support of all the major stakeholder groups (repositories, publishers, authors) will be required. Subject repositories, such as PubMed Central, which have not been active participants at this stage in the project, will have to be brought on board. Intellectual property, privacy and financial issues will have to be addressed.
The PIRUS project team recommends that JISC considers funding further research to address the issues described above.
COUNTER
Expand the mission of COUNTER to include usage statistics from repositories; consider implementing the new Article Report 1 as an optional additional report; modify the existing independent COUNTER audit to cover new reports and processes.
Repositories
Subject repositories to participate in the next stage of this project. All repositories should use standard data descriptions for article versions etc.
Publishers/Vendors
Accept, in principle, the desirability of providing credible usage statistics at the individual article level.
Conclusion
PIRUS has shown that it is feasible for repositories and publishers to adhere to common technical standards for measuring online usage, despite the diversity of organisational and technical environments in which they operate but also that further work will be required to translate the results of this feasibility study into practical, implementable, scalable solutions.