Following Eloy Rodrigues’ posting of an excellent statistics
package for DSpace (I strongly recommend it to DSpace users), it might be
opportune to remind users of GNU EPrints that a similar package has been
available for EPrints for about 18 months. It is downloadable from
http://eprints.utas.edu.au/262/.
The Statistics Add-on to the EPrints platform is responsible for the
gathering, processing and presentation of access, content and
administrative statistics generated by EPrints usage. It was developed at
UTas = University of Tasmania (Australia) based on principles established
by The University of Melbourne (Australia) and the package was
subsequently enhanced by feedback from the University of Otago (New
Zealand). Authors/depositors respond very favorably to access to
statistics about their papers, especially if they are required to deposit
(a “mandate”). They then see a reason for depositing!
The system was designed to be adjustable to any environment, because the
components can easily be configured, changed or extended, to respond to
different information needs. The modules are written in php and work off
the archive logs with a few (minimal) hooks into the Eprints mySQL
database, mainly to retrieve document titles. The insertion of new links
on the entry pages and the metadata display pages are usual. All the code
is open-source.
Important features of the UTas statistics system:
· Almost real time processing of event logs (adjustable from once
a day – most of us - to more frequently)
· Database based stored data (in a separate MySQL database)
· Detection and processing of the country of origin of accesses,
with the local campus separated out from the local country due to its
different characteristics
· Monthly download stats – allows detection of citation or
presentation events
· List of documents by access frequency in 4 weeks, monthly,
yearly or total (customizable)
· User-friendly graphics and tabular data, pretty realistic flags
For examples, see in alphabetical order Arizona
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/, Otago
http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/, Rhodes
http://eprints.ru.ac.za, or UTas
http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/. In
all cases look for the Detailed Statistics link on the entry page for
which I give the URL, or browse for any document and you should find a
link on the metadata page. Hope you like what you see and install it too.
Let me know if you do.
Arthur Sale
Professor of Computing (Research)
University of Tasmania
Australia
Received on Sat May 13 2006 - 08:53:41 BST