Countries accessing the LRA (2009-2011)

Following a conversation with a fellow repository manager on Friday about countries using our research, I did a bit of quick and dirty analysis on the LRA, taking a data range of 1/4/2009-30/4/2011.  Here’s the top 20 countries using us, and the percentage of the overall accesses they make up.

1. United Kingdom (39.72%)
2. United States (12.84%)
3. India (3.13%)
4. Germany (2.64%)
5. Australia (2.41%)
6. Canada (2.35%)
7. China (2.23%)
8. Italy (1.51%)
9. France (1.48%)
10. Malaysia (1.44%)
11. Netherlands (1.29%)
12. Japan (1.06%)
13. Iran (1.05%)
14. Spain (1.04%)
15. Greece (0.94%)
16. Turkey (0.89%)
17. Hong Kong (0.82)%
18. Ireland (0.82%)
19. Indonesia (0.77%)
20. Taiwan (0.75%)

• The top 10 make up 69.7% of all accesses to the LRA mounted research over that time.
• The top 20 make up 79.2% of all accesses to the LRA mounted research over that time.

I don’t know whether to be delighted or distressed that the bulk of accesses come from the UK.  It’s good that the research is getting read here, but so much depends these days on overseas researchers making use of the research we publish.  Other repository managers reading this – how does this compare to your own repositories? Similar? Completely different?

And for any Leicester folk reading this – are these the countries that we’d expect to be using our research?  Of course, we are always limited by the materials that academics send us, and I’m well aware there are many, many gaps in our collections that I’d be only too keen to fill!

LRA Most Accessed Research April 2011

1. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al)
2. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data (Garino, Gaia et al)
3. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard)
4. Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al)
5. Educational Leadership: an Islamic perspective (Shah, Saeeda J.A.)
6. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)
7. Authenticity in ELT Task Design: A Case Study of an ESP Project-Based Learning Module (Choi, Lai Kun)
8. A cross-cultural study of predictors of self-handicapping in university students (Pulford, Briony D. et al)
9. Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences (Preston, Carolyn C. et al)
10. Thomas C. Schelling’s psychological decision theory: Introduction to a special issue (Colman, Andrew M.)

The same paper as last month tops the charts for April, and sets a new record high for accesses (1019 accesses!); clearly a hot topic for the moment. Overall this month there has been a rise in all the items appearing in the chart; even while as a whole access to the LRA were down this month. However, the Easter extended shutdown likely affected the levels. Countrywise the same top ten countries continue to show up as last month.

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. India
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. Germany
7. China
8. Malaysia
9. France
10. Italy

In other news the LRA Annual report for 2010 is now available online for consultation.  One thing is very clear – this month’s top item scored almost as many accesses as last year’s annual top item.  It seems the use of research shared on the LRA just continues to rise month on month to new heights, which is a real credit to the LRA Administration team for making it possible!

LRA Top Accesses for January 2011

This month sees a notable improvement in access to the LRA, and a dramatic increase in the number of page views. Two things strike me as I look at the statistics this month. Firstly the top item is possibly the single highest individual monthly access since records began.

Chatting to the author and Prof Graham Shipley as I shared the good news it transpired that Prof Shipley shared the handle on the Classicist global mailing list, which accounts for the two peaks of access. The second thing I notice is the broad spread of items from all Colleges; especially heartening to see the strong interest in Arts, Humanities and Law based materials, which represent proportionally the smallest collection on the LRA. 

1. Delos: Investigating the notion of privacy within the ancient Greek house (Burke, Samantha) (2381/8947)
2. Female Fandom in an English ‘Sports City’: A sociological study of female spectating and consumption around sport (Pope, Stacey Elizabeth) (2381/8343)
3. Design of Flight Controllers based on Simplified LPV model of a UAV (Gu, Da-Wei et al) (2381/3879)
4. Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al) (2381/309)
5. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard) (2381/52)
6. Saint Christopher Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches, c.1250-c.1500 (Pridgeon , Eleanor Elizabeth) (2381/7964)
7. Teaching presentation skills to undergraduates: Students’ evaluations of a workshop course. (Colman, Andrew M.) (2381/537)
8. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data (Garino, Gaia et al) (2381/4441)
9. Aspects of speleogenesis in the Carboniferous limestone of North Derbyshire (Beck, John Salisbury) (2381/7561)
10. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond) (2381/7444)
11. The molecular characterisation of narcissus latent virus and Maclura mosaic virus (Badge, Joanne Louise) (2381/8993)

It’s worth highlighting that the joint 10th item on the list is the 700th thesis added to the LRA, which was actually added at the request of Dr Jo Badge herself early in January via the EThOS scanning service.  As I celebrated this fact on the social networks, it’s perhaps little surprise that it has such a high level of access so early in its availability (although it could just be that Jo writes a good thesis!)

I should add, that if any of our local academics did their thesis at Leicester then we can arrange to have it digitised via the British Library’s EThOS service.  This is a limited time offer that may well expire come Sept this year, so get in touch with ethesis@le.ac.uk sooner rather than later!  The process takes between 10-30 days, and we will need the author to sign a consent form in order to allow us to progress the request.

A little change in the lower end of the top 10 countries of access is about all we see though in terms of the geographical spread of access.

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. India
4. Germany
5. Canada
6. China
7. France
8. Malaysia
9. Italy
10. Australia

LRA Top Research items at Leicester Dec 2010

Happy new year, and welcome once again to the highlights from the Leicester Research Archive for the past month.

1. (1st equal) Female Fandom in an English ‘Sports City’: A sociological study of female spectating and consumption around sport (Pope, Stacey Elizabeth Sociology Thesis)
2. (1st equal) Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard Museum Studies Article)
3. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond Engineering Thesis)
4. Ancient Egyptian astronomy: timekeeping and cosmography in the new kingdom (Symons, Sarah Mathematics Thesis)
5. Visions of a new Jerusalem: predictive fiction in the Second World War (Hooley, Tristram English Thesis)
6. (6th equal) Pedagogical models for podcasts in higher education (Edirisingha, Palitha et al BDRA Conference Paper)
7. (6th equal) The costs of Activity-Based Management (Armstrong, Peter Management Article)
8. Teaching presentation skills to undergraduates: Students’ evaluations of a workshop course (Colman, Andrew M. Psychology Article)
9. Measuring the efficiency of European airlines: an application of DEA and Tobit Analysis (Fethi, Meryem Duygun et al Management Report)
10. (10th equal) Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al Health Sciences Article)
11. (10th equal) Thomas C. Schelling’s psychological decision theory: Introduction to a special issue (Colman, Andrew M Psychology Article)

A good mix and spread from across the university’s disciplines.  In terms of countries accessing the LRA, there were a few new surprises appearing in the top 10.

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. India
4. China
5. Germany
6. Canada
7. Iran
8. Italy
9. Japan
10. Taiwan

Most used repository items for October 2010

Here are the results of the most regularly accessed items in the LRA for the month of October.

1. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change Sandell, Richard  (Article)
2. Advanced control of photovoltaic converters Liu, Ying (Thesis)
3. Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care Pitchforth, Emma et al (Article)
4. Female Fandom in an English ‘Sports City’: A sociological study of female spectating and consumption around sport Pope, Stacey Elizabeth (Thesis)
5. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data Garino, Gaia et al (Report)
6. Lead-free soldering alloys: microstructure optimization for electronic applications Belyakov, Sergey (Thesis)
7. “There’s a coat peg with his name on it”: investigating the training implications to support the inclusion of pre-school children with special educational needs Harwood, Zoe  (Thesis)
8. Profcasting: a pilot study and guidelines for integrating podcasts in a blended learning environment Edirisingha, Palitha et al (Article)
9. Thomas C. Schelling’s psychological decision theory: Introduction to a special issue Colman, Andrew M. (Article)
10. A Study of Solidification Structure Evolution during Investment Casting of Ni-based Superalloy for Aero-Engine Turbine Blades. Dai, Huijuan (Thesis)
11. Teaching presentation skills to undergraduates: Students’ evaluations of a workshop course Colman, Andrew M. (Article) (10th equal)

Theses continue to be a richly accessed resource, but for the first time in a few months we’ve seen a lot of new items coming to the top of the heap; only three of this month’s top ten were in last month’s list.  In terms of countries of by levels of access, very little change – although the number 10 slot has changed for a new country this month (it was Malaysia last month).

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. India
4. Australia
5. Germany
6. Canada
7. China
8. Italy
9. France
10. Iran

Most used repository items for September 2010

Here are the top 10 accessed items on the LRA in the past month

1. Lead-free soldering alloys: microstructure optimization for electronic applications. Belyakov, Sergey  (Thesis)
2. Saint Christopher Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches, c.1250-c.1500. Pridgeon , Eleanor Elizabeth (Thesis)
3. Advanced control of photovoltaic converters. Liu. Ying (Thesis)
4. Thai celebrity culture and the Bangkok teenage audience.  Thapthiang, Nuwan (Thesis)
5. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data Garino. Gaia et al (Report)
6. Human Rights in Turkey: A Comparative Perspective on Violation and Resolution. Straw, David William Matthew (Thesis)
7. Succinct DOM. Delpratt, O’Neil et al (Conference Paper)
8. A Study of Solidification Structure Evolution during Investment Casting of Ni-based Superalloy for Aero-Engine Turbine Blades. Dai, Huijuan (Thesis)
9. Electrofinishing of metals using eutectic based ionic liquids. Abbott, A.P. et al (Article)
10. Effects of Long-Term High Temperature Exposure on the Microstructure of Haynes Alloy 230. Veverková, Jana (Thesis)

What is notable is the high proportion of theses getting a heady use on the repository – they are around 10% of the collection as a total, but unlike the 44% full-text items as a whole for the LRA, around 99.9% of theses on the repository are available in full text.  They’re also a unique research resource that is otherwise very much underused.  In contrast theses from Leicester on Ethos appear to be used around 1/10 as often, which is perhaps not a big surprise given the requirement to register before accessing any of their content.

Meanwhile the top countries accessing the LRA last month were as follows (no change from last month):

1. UK
2. USA
3. India
4. Australia
5. Germany

Most used repository items for August 2010

Here are the top 10 accessed items on the LRA in the past month

1. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data Garino. Gaia et al (Report)
2. Advanced control of photovoltaic converters. Liu. Ying (Thesis)
3. Lead-free soldering alloys: microstructure optimization for electronic applications. Belyakov, Sergey  (Thesis)
4. Electrofinishing of metals using eutectic based ionic liquids. Abbott, A.P. et al (Article)
5. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change. Sandell, Richard  (Article)
6. Human Rights in Turkey: A Comparative Perspective on Violation and Resolution. Straw, David William Matthew (Thesis)
7. Succinct DOM. Delpratt, O’Neil et al (Conference Paper)
8. Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care. Pitchforth, Emma (Article)
9. A Study of Solidification Structure Evolution during Investment Casting of Ni-based Superalloy for Aero-Engine Turbine Blades. Dai, Huijuan (Thesis)
10. Saint Christopher Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches, c.1250-c.1500. Pridgeon , Eleanor Elizabeth (Thesis)

Once again all the entries in this list are full text resources, and given that the LRA recently achieved a 44% Full-text content this is perhaps less surprising.  The top countries accessing the LRA last month were as follows:

1. UK
2. USA
3. India
4. Australia
5. Germany

LRA Top 10 Items: July 2010

Here are the top 10 accessed items on the LRA in the past month

1. Antisocial personality disorder: An evolutionary game theory analysis. Colman, Andrew M. et al (Article)
2. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data Garino. Gaia et al (Report)
3. Advanced control of photovoltaic converters. Liu. Ying (Thesis)
4. Lead-free soldering alloys: microstructure optimization for electronic applications. Belyakov, Sergey  (Thesis)
5. Succinct DOM. Delpratt, O’Neil et al (Conference Paper)
6. Electrofinishing of metals using eutectic based ionic liquids. Abbott, A.P. et al (Article)
7. A Study of Solidification Structure Evolution during Investment Casting of Ni-based Superalloy for Aero-Engine Turbine Blades. Dai, Huijuan (Thesis)
8. Saint Christopher Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches, c.1250-c.1500. Pridgeon , Eleanor Elizabeth (Thesis)
9. Measuring the outcomes and impact of learning in museums, archives and libraries: the Learning Impact Research Project end of project paper. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean et al. (Report)
10. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change. Sandell, Richard  (Article)

Interestingly once again all are full text, which given that the LRA is ~ 40% full text currently is by no means guaranteed.  However, it seems that our metadata tagging of metadata only items is helping searchers discriminate between bibliographic entries and those where they can actually read Leicester’s research.

Webometrics July 2010

The Webometrics scores are out for July 2010 and interestingly while the LRA has dropped down globally to 240th HEI-IR; we have remained at 16th in the UK.  Talking to some other repository managers it seems that this is something that’s happened to quite a few others – our national rankings unchanged, but globally slipping back a little.  I’d be interested to know which countries have done better than last time, if anyone’s got a spare bit of time to do some statistical analysis…

The Leicester Repository (LRA) in 2009: An overview of the top 100 items accessed

Happy New Year everyone.

And what better way to start 2010 than with a look back at 2009.  Over the last year I’ve been gathering information on the documents accessed on the LRA the most.  Monthly as you may know I produce a Top 10, with the most accessed items on it – more than one author here has been very pleased to turn up on it; some on a very regular basis.  But to cap a year of hard work by my team I’ve been digging into the data for the whole year.

What I have now is a very clear idea of the general subject areas where we’re seeing the most accesses coming in, as well as the type of items people are coming to see.  So what I’ve pulled together is the top 100 items on the LRA for 2009, and then had a closer look at them.  Some broad facts about the top 100:

• 719 items showed up in the analysis set
• 78% were full text items.
• 49% of all accesses (the largest proportion) were to full text articles
• 10% of the top 100 are full text theses (hitherto difficult items to access in print)
• 20% of the top 100 came from Museum Studies items
• 32% of items were from authors based in the College of Science & Engineering
• The average article in the top 100 had 473 accesses
• The median point for the top 100 is 446
• The highest accessed single item is an article from Management
• The highest ranked thesis is at #42 in the charts

There are a couple of caveats to these values.

1. Due to the way the DSpace software handles statistics, I was only able to work with items that had at least 20 accesses in a month; which means there is a likelihood that the real values for accesses will be lower in total than they were.
2. Some people may well have searched for and retrieved articles on the LRA from the Google cache – and these accesses would not have been counted by our software.

While these caveats mean I can’t draw any shockingly accurate truths, they are useful as a snapshot of LRA access.  If I get the time I’d love to go back and do the same work on the 2008 data.  The full report on these findings will be presented to the LRAPG on the 2nd Feb.

Top of the (Repo)Pops

A week or so ago I went through all the items on the LRA and looked at their usage figures since 1st Jan 09.  Normally I only look at these figures month by month, but it was suggested to do this for the whole of the year and hence the study.  Due to way DSpace is configured I could only scrape data for those used 20 times or more in a month – thus I can’t claim any great functional validity to these stats.  Took a while as well to do the number crunching.  But when I was done I was quite pleased with the overview that the data gave me.

What it did give once I summated the data was a very clear picture of the items in the repository that are being accessed the most.  We’ve passed this information on to departments and many of the individual researchers themselves for interest, and to reward them in a small way for their compliance in placing items onto the LRA.

In terms of greatest number of appearances in the top 100 (rather than in all 588 items in my list)- the top 5 Depts. whose work is most regually accessed on the LRA are:

1. Museum Studies
2. Psychology
3. Computer Science
4. Engineering
5. Education

Interesting.  But how does this rack up when you consider what proportion of the items on the LRA come from a Dept.? Psychology may have 11 appearances in the top 100, but with 241 papers there’s more chance of them being up there as part of a critical mass of papers.  So for interest I decided to divide the number of each Dept’s appearances in the top 100 by their total number of items on the LRA, to give what I’m calling Johnson’s Repository Significance Quotient (or JRSQ for short!).  When sorted by their JRSQ how does the top 5 look now?

1. Museum Studies
2. Institute of Life Long Learning
3. Social Work
4. Computer Science
5. BDRA

What this does tell me is that these collections are comprised of more papers overall that are getting high usage, though remember this is only taking into account the top 100 papers this year.  I’m giving serious thought to going through the remaining 488 items in the list and including them in the data set.  If there’s enough interest, maybe I will…

What does this all really mean?  Well nothing most probably.  The impact and usage of these items depends on too many variables to take account of in this quick and dirty analysis; such as custom and practice of searching for and using repository based items, use of personal networks to obtain papers, traditional journal usage, relative visibility on search engines of items in the LRA etc.  Doubtless you’ll be able to think of many others.  I’ve also not factored out full text items in the list from metadata only (this would be possible should it become a worthwhile endeavour).

UK Institutional Repository Rankings – July 2009 Edition

The Webometrics site  half yearly update of their ranking of world repositories is available.  For information on how they calculate their metric see here.  For further interest here’s the ranking of the top UK based institutional repositories, I’ve put their global score in brackets at the end, and those with mandates (as listed on ROARMAP)  in italics.

1. University of Cambridge (22)
2. University of Oxford (42)
3. University College London (51)
4. University of Edinburgh (71)
5. University of Southampton (74)
6. University of Warwick (123)
7. University of Glasgow (131)
8. University of Manchester (160)
9. University of Leeds (White Rose) (167)
10. University of Birmingham (187)
11. University of Nottingham (212)
12. LSE (215)
13. Open University (222)
14. Imperial College (225)
15. University of Bristol (232)
16. University of York (White Rose) (239)
17. Newcastle University (253)
18. Lancaster University (261)
19. University of Sheffield (265)
20. Durham University (302)
21. King’s College London (255)
22. University of Bath (309)
23. University of Essex (328)
24. Herriot-Watt University (344)
25. University of Liverpool (366)
26. University of Aberdeen (373)
27. University of St Andrews (376)
28. University of Leicester (383)
29. University of Surrey (406)
30. University of Kent (424)
31. University of Strathclyde (438)
32. UEA (476)
33. Cardiff University (478)
34. University of Sussex (486)
35. University of Reading (494)
36. Loughborough University (499)
37. University of Exeter (501)
38. Queen Mary University of London (518)
39. Manchester Metropolitan University (527)
40. Queen’s University Belfast (537)
41. Aberystwyth (547)
42. University of Dundee (592)
43. University of Brighton (626)
44. Royal Holloway (628)
45. De Montfort University (640)
46. University of Stirling (644)
47. City University London (669)
48. University of Salford (671)
49. Brunel University (678)
50. University of Westminster (685)

You can see the whole list of UK Institutional Repositories’ ranks here.  Contrasted with last timethe LRA has dropped down the list somewhat – with detailed metrics for our repository giving us the following changes in the sub-rankings for Leicester.

	July 09	Jan 09
Size	877	222
Visibility	378	186
Rich Files	363	125
Scholarly	422	125

 The most drastic change seems to be in terms of size, where a lot of repositories have clearly begun to be filled at a considerably advanced rate.  How the recent mandate at Leicester will affect these figures in the next 6 months will bear watching.