EPrints statistics at the University of Northampton Statistics for repositories: DSpace and Eprints 26/2/2013 /

NECTAR nectar.northampton.ac.uk nectar.northampton.ac.uk Northampton Electronic Collection of Theses And Research EPrints repository University research output from items 160 full text deposits 2012 activity: 30,000 visitors 113,000 page views 6,200 downloads

Reports we produce Monthly team statistics Item totals, access analytics, visitor information Quarterly school reports Deposit data by school, department and author Annual report The university’s yearly research snapshot Ad-hoc reports School backlogs, post-event impact etc.

Gathering statistics: IRStats Google Analytics Custom reports From EPrints / in-house a three-pronged attack © Batman

IRStats “IRStats is a flexible statistics package which allows easy processing of accesses to fulltext documents of eprints.”

IRStats is good for: (Very) quick overviews, totals and top ten lists Departmental reports Author, department and item “dashboards” Simple, static HTML output Good for including in documents and webpages Granular reporting (department / author / item level) Reliability (stats are server-side)

Issues I have with IRStats: The interface is clunky Graphical reports are dated No contextual information This is an entire IRStats report. Is it for the whole repository? A department? An author? An item? What year does it cover? What are the actual figures?

How we use IRStats Monthly download totals Quick answers Top ten lists Authors Items Search terms Referrers Countries

Google Analytics Free service, account required Just add the GA code to your page template var _gaq = _gaq || []; gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-Y']); gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = (' == document.location.protocol ? ' : ' + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); To track downloads, either: Make them fake web pages Add them as Events Either way involves adding a Javascript function to each link

Google Analytics Good for: Exploring data with advanced metrics and filters Tracking specific actions or events Creating quick, detailed PDF reports Getting serious with regular expressions Caveats: Requires some expertise for full benefits Hard to integrate with repository structure e.g. stats for a particular department or author Users may block Analytics at the browser level Relies on cookies – check the EU directiveEU directive Download access is only tracked from within EPrints Which can lead to some sizeable gaps… 

The story of item 2456 Jan-Feb 2013: According to Google Analytics: 6 views According to IRStats: 226 views Google Analytics only sees clicks on PDF links from within EPrints It misses visits from other sources (like Google or Google Scholar) IRStats records at the server level: it sees all (but with a narrow focus)

Custom reports Report scripts written in Perl Bring your own hacker Track author / admin activity (rather than visitor activity) Delivered as CSV data Data extended and manipulated: Excel / Google Drive spreadsheets Report website: PHP / MySQL / Javascript Visual elements via Google ChartsGoogle Charts

Custom reports: pdf delivered to deans & research leaders

Custom reports Combine the best of IRStats and Google Analytics Fill in the gaps Incorporate your custom repository features Mine your data however you please If you know how And if you have time  London  Madrid  NECTAR

In conclusion… IRStats Downloads only Fast and trustworthy A little rough around the edges Google Analytics Broad and deep statistics Flexible output May lure you to your doom Custom reports Sky’s the limit (if you know how) (and if you have time) T H A N K S F O R L I S T E N I N G