Author Archives: mlogan
Edinburgh Research Archive: March 2021
Edinburgh Research Archive: March 2021 • https://era.ed.ac.uk
March saw a record number of downloads for ERA, with a 10% increase on the previous best of May 2020 and a 27% increase on the then-record of March last year. It also saw a record number of unique items downloaded, albeit just 200 up on the previous best from January.
The total downloads so far this year has seen a 40,000 increase over last year, the number of unique items downloaded this year is 1.0% higher than 2020, and the percentage of the total stock that has been downloaded has passed the 50% mark within 3 months for the first time.
We follow-up to the November 2020 report looking at the three institutional repositories, as monitored by IRUS, with the most thesis downloads in 2020. Previously, we saw that the University of Edinburgh had the third most downloads but that it is likely to be overtaken by Oxford in the not too distant future. This time we’re breaking those downloads down imto percentiles, and seeing that the other two are significantly outperforming Edinburgh all the way through the 10% divides. White Rose sees significantly bigger multiples of its downloaded titles and Manchester fares better when the figures are adjusted for the size of the active collection. ERA works its tail a lot harder: it has both a bigger digital collection and gets a much higher proportion of unique titles downloaded at least once. Overall though, ERA seems to sell the facility to its users but not the contents.
Edinburgh Research Explorer: March 2021
Edinburgh Research Explorer: March 2021 • www.research.ed.ac.uk
The dip in download numbers which seemed to inflict Research Explorer from the last quarter of 2019 onwards, due to some heavy-handed filtration implemented in an upgrade at that time, appeared to have eased following another upgrade in August 2020. ERA, which was a year ahead in its upgrade schedule, recovered from its dip and has been booming with record numbers across the board, Research Explorer though, has been somewhat subdued. The period from Sept.-March did see an overall improvement of around 4.5% over the previous year, but Jan.-March has been further behind 2019, than it is ahead of 2020.
There was also some expectation of another boost to the numbers resulting from the launch of the new interface at the beginning of March, but that is not yet apparent. March’s figures continued the general trend since October of the quieter months over-performing compared to last year and the busier months to under-perform, with none of them comparing to 2019. This parallels what we saw with the filtration, the bigger numbers being suppressed and the long tail being largely unaffected.
Edinburgh Research Downloads: December 2020
Edinburgh Research Downloads: December 2020 • www.research.ed.ac.uk • www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk
• Looking at how Edinburgh Research Explorer and ERA have performed over the last year.
• Research Explorer hasn’t had the best of years, the numbers being shackled by the same filtration that had repressed ERA a year earlier, although they picked-up enough at the end to scrape past the million downloads for the second-year running; ERA on the other hand, has been somewhat unleashed.
• The usual snapshot of last month’s performances.
• A snapshot of the year that’s gone. Continue reading
Edinburgh Research Downloads: November 2020
Edinburgh Research Downloads: November 2020 • www.research.ed.ac.uk • www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk
• Looking at how Edinburgh Research Explorer and ERA have performed over the last year relative to other institutions across the UK. Overall they’ve done OK but probably could/should have done better: they’ve just about hung on to the coat-tails of the big guns, but they’ve been outperformed by a few smaller establishments.
• Looking at theses specifically, things look better: UCL have had a good year but ERA’s managed to stay ahead of them, allowing both to make the minutest of inroads into Manchester’s lead; White Rose though, are bigger and growing faster than everyone else.
• The usual snapshot of last month’s performances.
• A snapshot of the year-so-far. Continue reading