Thanks for taking the time to post these stats, Michael. This is the
first time that I've seen any stats on an individual repository that
makes any considerable use of the button. If your repository turns out
to be representative, it certainly shows that the button is worthwhile
for some users, albeit only for 1.2% of views of the items in question.
Even though the use is very low, it's obviously still valuable to offer
such services where they are considered consistent with the
institution's evaluation of their own legal liability. (It's interesting
that you are also using DSpace but the web form spamming didn't occur in
your case - but in any case, it should be possible to re-design the
plug-in to avoid this, if it's not already been done by the developers
since my reported experience.)
I'm particularly interested in your development of an application for
managing the issue of changing contact details: is/will this be
available to the non-technical administrator through the usual DSpace
admin interface? Obviously it depends on the repository manager having
the new contact details, but it's good to have a means to do it other
than editing the database directly! I'd imagine that there are other
DSpace users who'd be very interested in being able to do this.
It would be great to hear the stats for a few more repositories, to see
whether others have similar usage of the button.
Talat
Michael White wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Talat Chaudri wrote:
> > Does anyone have statistics for the actual use of the button, i.e.
> > number of requests as a percentage of total access, number of requests
> > agreed and refused by the author etc, for a particular repository? It
> > would be very interesting to see whether our experience was unusual or
> > typical. I would not like to advocate the button until it is shown
> > that people really use it.
>
> OK, not a scientific analysis by a long shot, but your question got me
> wondering and I've finally found a few minutes to investigate and pull
> some basic (but unchecked) figures out of our system.
>
> Here at Stirling we have had mandatory deposit of Journal Articles
> in our repository (STORRE: http://storre.stir.ac.uk/) since September
> 2008. In order to enable immediate deposit of items where a publisher
> requires an embargo, we have added an embargo facility and a "Request
> a copy" button.
>
> We are currently using DSpace v1.4.1. and our repository is all full text.
>
> Total no. of items in STORRE at the end of March: 845
> Total no. of item (metadata) views during March: 23,004
> Total no. of bitstream (file) downloads during March: 25,506
> Number of embargoed bitstreams at end of March: 101
> Number of "Request a copy" requests during March: 33
> Number of those requests accepted: 23
> Number of those requests actively rejected: 0
>
> OK, this means that embargoed items make up around 12% of repository
> content - so embargoed items get (on average) 12% of views, i.e. 2760
> views, and from those views, 33 copy requests are sent, so, on
> average, this means that approximately 1.2% of viewers of embargoed
> items go on to request a copy of that item . . .
>
> I said it wasn't very scientific :-)
>
> So, the button is definitely getting some use, and around 2/3rds of
> those requests are (presumably) genuine requests that the submitter
> has responded positively to. I have no feedback as to why around a 1/3
> of requests are not getting (or perhaps just have not yet had) a
> response - further investigation is required!
>
> I have also had some anecdotal feedback from academics with embargoed
> items in STORRE who are pleased that they are still able to use the
> repository to promote their work and then use the "Request a copy"
> functionality to provide copies to interested users for their own
> personal use.
>
> Talat also raised the issue of the "Request a copy" form being spammed
> - from a quick look at the "Request a copy" data that has been
> captured from STORRE (requester names/email addresses), it does not
> appear that our "Request a copy" form is (currently!) being spammed.
>
> Finally, as Talat mentioned in another part of this discussion, one
> problem with the "Request a copy" feature (in the DSpace world) is
> that the request is sent to the original submitter of the item - this
> is fine when the author is the submitter, but we do occasionally do
> mediated deposit in the Library, and we also allow "proxy depositing"
> (where a departmental administrator will deposit on behalf of
> academics in their department). To get around this, I've just created
> a very basic application that will list all of the items submitted by
> a given repository user, indicating which are currently under
> embargo, and will then enable you to update the submitter information
> for any items to enable requests for copies to be routed to the
> appropriate academic (crude but effective!). Of course, the original
> submitter information is still held in the provenance field so is not
> lost completely . . .
>
> I hope this is of interest.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike
> Joint STORRE Manager
>
> Michael White
> eLearning Developer
> Centre for eLearning Development (CeLD)
> 3V3a, Cottrell
> University of Stirling
> Stirling SCOTLAND
> FK9 4LA
>
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Tel: +44 (0) 1786 466877
> Fax: +44 (0) 1786 466880
>
> http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/celd/
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Academic Excellence at the Heart of Scotland.
> The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number
> SC 011159.
--
Dr Talat Chaudhri
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Research Officer
UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, Great Britain
Telephone: +44 (0)1225 385105 Fax: +44 (0)1225 386838
E-mail: [log in to unmask] Skype: talat.chaudhri
Web: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/t.chaudhri/
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