Tag Archives: Edinburgh Research Explorer

How to be Popular (in Edinburgh Research Explorer)

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Edinburgh Research Explorer • www.research.ed.ac.uk

These are conclusions from a survey of the Top 100 MOST POPULAR downloads from Edinburgh Research Explorer in August 2019, it contains some VERY obvious biases and doesn’t reflect the breadth, depth, or usefulness of the repository as a whole; and shows that whilst OPEN ACCESS can reach a wider audience, it can also be ignored by a wider audience.

1. STEER CLEAR OF SCIENCE

Top 100 downloads in Edinburgh Research Explorer by school: science and Non-science
Fig i. Top 100 downloads in Edinburgh Research Explorer by school: science and non-science

Research items from science-related schools made up 18% of the Top 100, dropping to 12% in the Top 50 and 0% in the Top 10.

2. DON’T COLLABORATE

Edinburgh Research Explorer: Downloads (x) vs. No. of authors (y)
Fig ii. Edinburgh Research Explorer: Downloads (x) vs. No. of authors (y)

With each additional author, the number of items and the average number of downloads decreased.

3. YOU DON’T HAVE TO WRITE IN ENGLISH, BUT IT HELPS

In the Top 100, one item was written in Italian, the remainder in English:
that was also one of only five items that month, that failed to find an audience outwith the UK.

4. GO OPEN-ACCESS

8 of the Top 100 items didn’t offer Open-Access Permissions, they averaged 25% fewer downloads than the overall average.

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

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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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