Monday, November 8, 2010

What data can Research Management Systems and Repositories exchange for mutual benefit?

We're thinking about our stakeholder groups and how and when to target them about the Symplectic to repository connector. Understanding how users interact with a CRIS or similar (in this case Symplectic but could be other platforms) may help target advocacy materials more effectively. From the CRIS it would good to profile:

  • what proportion of content is deposited or approved/declined by authors and what proportion is deposited/approved/declined by delegates (ie someone "impersonating" the author)?
  • usage patterns over time, by department - do some departments interact regularly whilst others batch up work to deal with once or twice a year?
  • what proportion of staff in a department have logged in to the CRIS - ever/in the last six months/this month? Are there many known "non-users"?
  • proportion of research outputs in a department which have been "harvested" automatically and which have been added manually

What data would a CRIS be looking for from a repository? Perhaps download statistics could be fed back for incorporation in CRIS reports or displayed as part of the author's publication list - ideally not just downloads but some geographical and domain data as well.
Would it be interesting to compare the journal impact factor - often included in a CRIS - with individual paper hits and downloads?

Are there other areas of data exchange that would help improve the service we offer to depositors?

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