Next generation Open Access analytics: A case study

Abstract

A critical component in the development of sustainable funding models for Open Access (OA) is the ability to communicate impact in ways that are meaningful to a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders, including institutional partners, funders, and authors. While traditional paywall publishers can take advantage of industry standard COUNTER reports to communicate usage to subscribing libraries, no similar standard exists for OA content. Instead, many organizations are stuck with proxy metrics like sessions and page views that struggle to discriminate between robotic access and genuine engagement. This paper presents the results of an innovative project that builds on existing COUNTER metrics to develop more flexible reporting. Reporting goals include surfacing third party engagement with OA content, the use of graphical report formats to improve accessibility, the ability to assemble custom data dashboards, and configurations that support the variant needs of diverse stakeholders. We’ll be sharing our understanding of who the stakeholders are, their differing needs for analytics, feedback on the reports shared, lessons learned, and areas for future research in this evolving area.