Patrick OBrien
Semantic Web Research Director
Montana State University
Kenning Arlitsch
Dean
Montana State University
The dataset compiled with the Repository Analytics & Metrics Portal (RAMP) is offering a new picture of use and visibility across institutional repositories (IR). The data suggest that IR offer significant value when optimized for search engines and when user activity is accurately reported. However, the IR community has been without a trusted analytics data source for making assessments that are comparable across institutions. Our research team developed RAMP as a free web service that has attracted 35 institutional subscribers in its first year of operation. In addition to improving analytics accuracy and serving as a diagnostic tool for IR performance, RAMP is generating a dataset that offers exciting analysis and research opportunities. In this session we present an overview of the analytics data sources available to IR managers, and we offer a preliminary analysis of some of the RAMP data collected to date. The data demonstrate: 1) a large variance in the use of IR content across repositories; 2) the representation of the open access IR academic record in Google search results; and 3) what part of the open access IR academic record users are accessing the most.
