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Benchmark Statistics Service (BEST). What’s going on with Australian repositories?. What are repository statistics?. Who cares?. Policy-makers and meta-researchers What products of research funding appear in Australian repositories, and how are they used? Gaps, growth areas, hot topics etc.
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Benchmark Statistics Service(BEST) What’s going on with Australian repositories?
Who cares? • Policy-makers and meta-researchers What products of research funding appear in Australian repositories, and how are they used? Gaps, growth areas, hot topics etc. • Repository managers and administrators How do the contents and usage of my repository compare with others? • Authors, depositors, users Item/author usage, deposit patterns, etc.
All repositories can tell you… What they’ve got
Many also show How they’re used
But how does this Compare with this?
At a grand scale… • Numerous discovery services and directories (OpenDOAR, OAI-ster, Repository 66) • Also some aggregators of content information (ROAR) • Many industry-specific standards, followed to some extent by some of community (OAI-PMH, SUSHI, authority lists)
At a grand scale… Other relevant statistics projects… • JISC IRS has examined ways of using OAI-PMH to harvest event information, and has recently developed “IRStats”, a package to process EPrints and DSpace logs at the repository level. • MESUR and precursor activities have examined aggregation using link servers.
What’s missing… The ability to combine and compare repository usage statistics across Aust. repositories. • Broadly applicable standards for defining and representing contents and events • Means of adjusting for variation between repositories, communities, disciplines, industries • Service for harvesting, aggregating and presenting repository statistics
What’s the approach? • Short project to design pilot service, demonstrating the possibilities of aggregated usage statistics • Limited participants in first round: primarily research institutions • Build on existing work (IRS, MESUR, ROAR) and standards (DC, METS, OAI-PMH)
What’s the approach? • Work with related groups (MACAR, PILIN, People Australia) • Interoperable (use OAI-PMH; software, platform and repository agnostic) • Extensible (future needs of new users, other repository types, new applications)
Steps to an aggregator service • Identify a group of repositories for pilot • Identify priority use cases • Define scope, guiding principles, needs • Define data elements, schema • Assess and build repositories’ ability to expose standard reports as defined • Design and build aggregator • Present to users • Feedback, refine, extend
Future possibilities • Integration with other systems (ORCA, AONS) • Use of OpenURL • Alternative to citation indices for assessment of research impact • Examine user behaviour; threads, use of related subject/author links