KE supported the development of Usage Statistics as an invaluable tool to measure the impact of developments in the area of Open Access repositories and National Licenses; across systems and filtering-out robots.
Several workshops took place between 2009 and 2011 with representatives from various projects in the field of usage statistics, including COUNTER, PIRUS, OA Statistik and SURE statistics. These workshops resulted in a briefing paper on the Value of Usage Statistics and an agreed set of guidelines for the exchange of Usage Statistics.
16 June 2009 - Geneva, Switzerland
Representatives from projects including COUNTER, OA Statistik and Knowledge Exchange identified possible joint activity.
22 January 2010 - Goettingen, Germany
Various national projects in the field of Usage Statistics proposed activities to jointly work on:
- Promote OAI- PMH SUSHI for specific expected needs, contact SUSHI for easy to implement sw solution, distribute the lightweight SUSHI (SURE), NISOOpenURLContext encoding
- European Robot list (updated real time, stamped for Counter standard)
- Compare Interoperability Guidelines OA Stat > SURFsure > PIRUS > Open AIRE (and of course for use in Denmark!) start in February, discuss in Berlin, March
- IP-masking issue. Explore the law, regulations and recommend an approach (KE study)
- Feasibility/Scoping Study on usefully aggregated (national and international) Usage Data look at relevant costs, markets for business and efforts regarding de-duplication
- Introduce other Impact Factor based on Usage Statistics (as serious alternative for Journal Impact factor) (Topic for Berlin, March)
- Use/publish Usage Stats to stimulate/challenge Publishers: to open up their usage data information; for better informed negotiations on licenses
29-30 March 2010 - Berlin, Germany
Technical experts working in partner projects collecting usage statistics including PIRUS2, OAstatistik and SURFsure projects. Experts from other related projects (RePec and NeeO) were also involved.
Joint activities were prioritised and scoped.
Guidelines to exchange usage statistics and robot list
All four Knowledge Exchange partner countries as well as countries outside of KE, should benefit form an agreed set of guidelines which could be used when collecting and comparing data on usage statistics. The guidelines include an agreed approach to the robotlist to extend the COUNTER list of robots (to be excluded when counting downloads).
Briefing paper: Combined usage statistics to provide research intelligence
The briefing paper proposes how to collect and exchange usage statistics to provide insights, 'research intelligence' on OA developments to the research community, and business and society in general
28 June 2011 - Leiden, The Netherlands
The last workshop on the exchange of Usage Statistics bought together experts from the member countries and other relevant stakeholders to review the results of the previous workshops in Geneva, Berlin and Goettingen.
The participants concluded that the exchanges between the Usage Statistics initiatives were very successful, lead to better understanding between the initiatives and an agreed set of guidelines.
As the initiatives have met and established a network of trusted parties; further developments and/or cooperation in this area can happen without KE involvement.
