Edinburgh Research Archive | ER-data: Jan. – June 2019

Edinburgh Research Archive | ER-data: January 2019 - Jun. 2019
Edinburgh Research Archive • www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk • ERdata: Jan. – June 2019

The first half of 2019 saw the fifth highest total of downloads from ERA over a six-month period, unfortunately this is the lowest total of its ‘mature’ phase (since Jan-Jun 2017 download numbers have been consistently higher than 300,000 per 6-month block).

Edinburgh Research Archive: downloads Jun 2013 - June 2019, in six-monthly blocks
Fig i. Edinburgh Research Archive: downloads Jun 2013 – June 2019, in six-monthly blocks

More disappointingly, this is the first time in ERAs history that we’ve witnessed a fall-off in numbers in two consecutive blocks: December 2018 saw a 15% decline and June 2109 has brought a further decline of 6.5%.

The remainder of this report aims to offer an overview of the last six-months of download activity on the Edinburgh Research Archive. Using data generated through the IRUS-UK download statistics portal to investigate that activity under the following headings:

[Also available as a PDF – 605kb]
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Edinburgh Research Explorer | ER-data: Jan. – June 2019

Edinburgh Research Explorer | ER-data: January 2019 - June 2019
Edinburgh Research Explorer • www.research.ed.ac.uk • ERdata: Jan. – June 2019

The first six-months of 2019, as now seems inevitable, have proved to be the busiest six-months in Edinburgh Research Explorer’s brief history, with 543,152 downloads. This is not only the first time that the half-a-million milestone has been breached within such a short period, but represents a 35% increase on the previous best. As the chart below indicates, this rate of growth is unprecedented following a full 6-months:

Edinburgh Research Explorer: downloads May 2017- June 2019, in six-monthly blocks
Fig i. Edinburgh Research Explorer: downloads May 2017- June 2019, in six-monthly blocks

This report aims to offer an overview of the last six-months of download activity on Edinburgh Research Explorer. The data generated through the IRUS-UK download statistics portal is somewhat limited, it won’t tell us much about the users, in terms of who is downloading what, but it will offer up a few broad clues. This report will investigate those clues under the following headings:

[Also available as a PDF]
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Oldest thesis record in the British Library’s e-thesis online service (EThOS)

Over the last few weeks and months we’ve been adding a lot of digitised material from our historical collections to the Edinburgh Research Archive. One of the collections that has been scanned is a series of M.D theses written in Latin and published in the period from late 1700s to early 1800s. We now can claim to have the oldest thesis record in the British Library’s e-thesis online service (EThOS) – a dissertation written by Thomas Charles Hope and published in 1787. The challenge is on for other institutions to beat this.

Thomas_Charles_Hope

Thomas Charles Hope was one of the University of Edinburgh’s more interesting alumnus who discovered the chemical element Strontium, and also taught a young Charles Darwin who viewed his chemistry lectures as highlights in his otherwise largely dull education at Edinburgh University (we’ve come along way since!).

Thomas Charles Hope’s M.D thesis can be accessed online for free in the Edinburgh Research Archive.