On 20 January 2011 19:24, Matveyeva, Susan <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is it appropriate to discuss desirable new functionality here? I am very
> interested in automated delivery of statistics of hits and downloads to our
> authors. Bepress Digital Commons has this feature. The system sends monthly
> reports to the authors. Some our faculty mentioned to me how wonderful it
> would be to receive monthly email update from SOAR. Personally, I think that
> automated statistics delivery is the excellent tool to promote an
> institutional repository and to recruit content from authors. I’d like to
> hear your opinion on this matter. Would it be a good idea to develop
> similar functionality for DSpace? Sorry if I jumped off the topic.
>
>
> Hi,
I think that would depend on what you expect to get from having such a
feature. If the goal is to have positive reinforcement about the use of
content in the repository, then an automated email to authors (or depositor
- it may not be feasible to email all of the authors, unless the contact
details are an explicit part of submission), is going to report on whatever
the stats are (well, whatever the system thinks they are!) whether that's
good or bad. The number of accesses to repository deposits may depend on how
well the deposit is publicised, whether the same content is available
elsewhere, etc. What would be the reaction of depositors to receiving
reports saying there were few downloads?
And it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation - an author needs to be
depositing into the repository in order to get those reports. The promise
that they will get the reports might encourage some, but there is no
positive reinforcement for authors that haven't already deposited.
In both of those cases, it might be a better strategy to distribute
[manually] selected statistics to the authors that you wish to encourage to
use the repository. Highlighting the actual success stories, and maybe even
encouraging a bit of a rivalry amongst the authors, might be more effective
in not only encouraging deposits, but in having them advocate and publicise
the repository as a place to access their content.
On the other hand, if there is active resistance to using the repository,
because the authors need to be able to report on the usage - regardless of
whether it's good or bad - then that would lean more towards the email of
reports. Although it's not necessarily clear that scheduled reports would be
of more use than providing ways for them to pull that information when they
require it, and technically I would argue there are fewer complications to
providing the means to pull that information, than to automatically
distribute it.
Regards,
G
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