TY - JOUR
T1 - Undercounting File Downloads from Institutional Repositories
AU - Obrien, Patrick
AU - Arlitsch, Kenning
AU - Sterman, Leila
AU - Mixter, Jeff
AU - Wheeler, Jonathan
AU - Borda, Susan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Author(s). Published with license by American Fisheries Society © Patrick OBrien, Kenning Arlitsch, Leila Sterman, Jeff Mixter, Jonathan Wheeler, and Susan Borda.
PY - 2016/10/2
Y1 - 2016/10/2
N2 - A primary impact metric for institutional repositories (IR) is the number of file downloads, which are commonly measured through third-party Web analytics software. Google Analytics, a free service used by most academic libraries, relies on HTML page tagging to log visitor activity on Google's servers. However, Web aggregators such as Google Scholar link directly to high value content (usually PDF files), bypassing the HTML page and failing to register these direct access events. This article presents evidence of a study of four institutions demonstrating that the majority of IR activity is not counted by page tagging Web analytics software, and proposes a practical solution for significantly improving the reporting relevancy and accuracy of IR performance metrics using Google Analytics.
AB - A primary impact metric for institutional repositories (IR) is the number of file downloads, which are commonly measured through third-party Web analytics software. Google Analytics, a free service used by most academic libraries, relies on HTML page tagging to log visitor activity on Google's servers. However, Web aggregators such as Google Scholar link directly to high value content (usually PDF files), bypassing the HTML page and failing to register these direct access events. This article presents evidence of a study of four institutions demonstrating that the majority of IR activity is not counted by page tagging Web analytics software, and proposes a practical solution for significantly improving the reporting relevancy and accuracy of IR performance metrics using Google Analytics.
KW - Google Analytics
KW - IR
KW - Web analytics
KW - digital library assessment
KW - institutional repositories
KW - log file analytics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84990990216&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/01930826.2016.1216224
DO - 10.1080/01930826.2016.1216224
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84990990216
SN - 0193-0826
VL - 56
SP - 854
EP - 874
JO - Journal of Library Administration
JF - Journal of Library Administration
IS - 7
ER -