Understanding and interpreting IRUS COUNTER Release 5 (R5) data | IRUS | Jisc
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  • Understanding and interpreting IRUS COUNTER Release 5 (R5) data

Understanding and interpreting IRUS COUNTER Release 5 (R5) data

IRUS collects raw usage data and processes into COUNTER-conformant statistics. This provides repositories with comparable, authoritative, standards-based data.

Release 5 of the COUNTER Code of Practice introduces new terminology, metrics, and report structures. Here's an overview of the key things relevant to repositories and IRUS.

Requests and investigations

There are 4 Metric_Types that are applicable to repositories and available within IRUS.

  • Total_Item_Requests is similar to the previous IRUS Release 4 service "number of successful downloads" metric and counts the total number of views of a full content item e.g. downloading a PDF or an image.
  • Unique_Item_Requests also counts number of views of a full content item but de-duplicates when multiple file types are downloaded from the same item record in the same user session. For example, downloading the PDF and a supporting image for the same item is counted once.
  • Total_Item_Investigations counts views of records associated with an item (e.g. abstract, metadata) as well as full content (e.g. PDF, image, etc.). For example, viewing an abstract and then a PDF for the item will be counted twice.
  • Unique_Item_Investigations also counts views of records associated with an item (e.g. abstract, metadata) as well as full content (e.g. PDF, image, etc.) but de-duplicates use for the same item in a user session. For example, viewing an abstract and then a PDF for the item will be counted once.

Requests are useful for an indication of usage and Unique_Item_Requests is particularly useful for comparing different items within a repository.

Investigations are useful as an indication of overall interest in an item including those that do not have files associated. Note that investigations are only available for repositories that have implemented the R5 tracker.

Double-clicks and robot usage

As part of the COUNTER processing, IRUS filters out usage by known robots using both the COUNTER robots list and an additional IRUS robots list. Requests to download an item where the mouse is clicked twice within thirty seconds are designated as "double clicks" and only counted as one request. For more information about how IRUS processes raw tracker data see the Data ingest and processing section of the Service Description.

IRUS item types

Item types are not part of the COUNTER standard but are an additional feature of IRUS. So that we can provide consistent and comparable reports across repositories, we map the descriptions supplied by repositories to a controlled list of IRUS item types.

{unspecified} indicates that either a repository has not specified an item type or we have not yet established a mapping between the source item type and our list of IRUS item types.

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