[OAI-implementers] Document usage into institutional repositories

[Frederic MERCEUR]

Hello,

I have to prepare a study about the usage of the documents available 
into Archimer <http://www.ifremer.fr/docelec/>, our Institutional 
repository.

Here are some of the first results:

    *  There is now more than 3700 documents available freely (about
      2000 publications, 500 reports, 60 books, 900 conferences
      proceedings). 46% of these documents have been published after
      2000. These documents are mainly about life sciences but there are
      also some documents about physics, Geology...

    * It seems that 90% of the full-texts are downloaded directly from
      Google. Then, the success of a document is of course linked to its
      quality but also to technical aspects:

    * Documents that have a large number of pages (ex: theses) are more
      downloaded that document that have a few pages (ex: publications)

    * It seems than Google does not index documents that are bigger than
      10Mo. Then documents bigger than 10Mo are then downloaded 10 less
      times than other documents

    * Even if the documents are downloaded from Google, we can detect a
      high proportion of universities and scientific institutions in users.

    * Documents that are only available into our repository are, of
      course, more downloaded that documents that are available in many
      places. This is particularly true for publications. Recent
      international publications, that are also available from editor
      web site, are less downloaded that old publications that are only
      available from our repository.

    * It seems that the first one that put a document have a kind of
      bonus from Google. For example, when we put a publication on line
      before the editor, it seems that it is more downloaded, even after
      the publication on the Editor Web site. When we load a publication
      several months after it was available on editor web site, it can
      hardly be found on Google.   

    * In march 2008 (march is usually the higher month for stats), the
      documents were downloaded in the following way:
          o Reports average: 20 downloads (min : 0, max: 200)
          o Theses average: 50 downloads (min : 0, max: 300)
          o Publications average: 8 downloads (min : 0, max: 70)
          o Conference proceedings average: 15 downloads (min : 0, max: 100)


    * The average rate of downloads have decreases since last year.
      Indeed, the documents loaded after July 2007 match about 44% of
      the total documents available into our repository. However these
      44% documents match only 22% of the downloads during September
      2008. this is a little bit disturbing and I am not sure of the causes:
          o There are more and more documents available on the internet,
            so maybe it is more and more difficult for a document to be
            visible
          o Maybe there is a kind of a self saturation. For example,
            1000 of the 37000 documents are about oysters (which is one
            of the main research subjects in our institute). There are
            clearly some documents (ex: annual survey reports) that are
            quite similar, so there are not as interesting as there was
            all original search results.
          o Even if the full text are indexed quite quickly by Google,
            maybe it take some time before the new documents appear in
            top of google list.


Could you please tell me if you have the same comments on your own 
repository?

    * What is the average download rate per type of documents in your
      repository?
    * Does it increase or decrease when the number of documents is
      increasing?
    * ...


Thanks for your help.

Kind regards,
Fred


 

 

-- 
Fred Merceur
Ifremer / Bibliothèque La Pérouse
frederic.merceur at ifremer.fr
Tél : 02-98-49-88-69
Fax : 02-98-49-88-84
Bibliothèque La Pérouse <http://www.ifremer.fr/blp/>
Archimer, Ifremer's Institutional Repository 
<http://www.ifremer.fr/docelec/>
Avano, a marine and aquatic OAI harvester <http://www.ifremer.fr/avano/>

*Avant d'imprimer, pensez à l'environnement!*
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