By Erica D McLaren, on 9 February 2012
The UCL Discovery Top 20 download statistics for January 2012 are available at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/last-month.html.
The three most downloaded papers in January 2012 mirror the top three downloads in 2011.
The 2004 IFS briefing paper ‘The ‘fat tax’: economic incentives to reduce obesity’ proved to be the most popular full text item to download in UCL Discovery in 2011 and in January 2012.
The second most popular paper is the WCRF/AICR Expert Report ‘‘Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective’‘, and third Dr Kassem’s thesis The legal aspects of seaworthiness: current law and development undertaken at Swansea University.
There are three new items to the Top 20 downloads:
The 2011 article ‘Enabled backchannel: conference Twitter use by digital humanists’ by Claire Ross, Dr Melissa Terras, Professor Claire Warwick and Anne Welsh published in the Journal of Documentation;
The 2008 chapter Mapping the East End ‘Labyrinth’ by Dr Laura Vaughan, published in a book that accompanied the Museum of London’s exhibition on Jack the Ripper and the East End Labyrinth; and,
The 2009 article Testing the ‘Laacher See hypothesis’: a health hazard perspective by Felix Riede published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
By Erica D McLaren, on 9 February 2012
The 2011 annual download statistics are now available via http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/past_stats/annual-2011.html.
The total number of downloads for 2011 (584,965) sees a 10% increase on full text access in 2010. Apart from July and August 2011, monthly downloads totalled over 45,000 each month.
The origin of the downloads identifies the global interest in UCL research; of the 584,965 downloads for 2011, the top 10 countries for people accessing full text in UCL Discovery are the UK: 112,713 downloads (or 19.3% of the total), the United States: 101,536 (or 17.4%), France: 38,068 (or 6.5%), Germany: 23,543 (or 4%), China: 19,639 (or 3.4%), India: 18,102 (or 3.1%), Australia: 16,182 (or 2.8%), Japan: 12,441 (or 2.15), Canada: 11,729 (or 2%), and ‘Korea, Republic of’: 9,502 (or 1.6%). Please note that the percentages by country are for the total downloads in 2011 – interest by country varies item by item and can be seen in individual record statistics.
The 2011 annual downloads statistics also identifies the top 50 most downloaded items for the year. The most popular paper for 2011 was the IFS briefing paper ‘The ‘fat tax’: economic incentives to reduce obesity’ by Andrew Leicester and Frank Windmeijer, with 10,660 downloads. This paper has been the most downloaded paper for seven months in 2011, as seen in our monthly top 20 downloads.
Nine papers feature in the 2011 top 50 most downloaded items that were not in the monthly statistics for the same year. They include three UCL theses: from the Bartlett School of Planning – ‘The urban development of Damascus: a study of its past, present and future’ by Zara Lababedi; from the Eastman Dental Institute – ‘Factors Affecting Outcome of Non-Surgical Root Canal Treatment’ by Dr Yuan Ling Ng; and from the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies – ‘Digital fabrication inspired design: Influence of fabrication parameters on a design process’ by Agata Guzik.
The nine papers also include two IFS publications: ‘Evaluación del Programa Familias en Acción: Subsidios Condicionados de la Red de Apoyo Social. Informe de la Linea de Base (Ajustado)’ by Professor Orazio Attanasio, Professor Costas Meghir and Dr Marcos Marcos Vera-Hernandez; and ‘A retrospective on Friedman’s Theory of Permanent Income’ by Professor Costas Meghir.
The other four items new to the download statistics are: the UCL SSEES paper ‘Foreign Direct Investment and Restructuring in the Automotive Industry in Central and East Europe’ by Professor Slavo Radosevic; the UCL CASA paper ‘GIS and urban design’ by Professor Mike Batty, Dr Martin Dodge, Dr Bin Jiang, and Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith; the Space Syntax book chapter ‘Space is the machine, part one: theoretical preliminaries’ by Professor Bill Hillier; and the Road Safety Research report ‘Trends in fatal car-occupant accidents’ by Heather Ward, Dr Nicola Christie, Professor Ronan Lyons, Jeremy Broughton, Professor David Clarke and Patrick Ward.
By Erica D McLaren, on 18 January 2012
A new briefing by Alma Swan on the impact of Open Access on researchers, universities and society, commissioned by Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL), is now available as PDF at RLUK
The briefing outlines the latest evidence on increased impact for researchers in terms of visibility, usage and citation, together with a description of the benefits for the profile of institutions and the wider economic impact for society.
According to the briefing, researchers gain from the increased usage and impact of their work. By depositing their research in Open Access (OA) repositories (such as UCL Discovery) their work is more easily retrieved due to search engines indexing OA repository content.
Alma Swan goes on to highlight that without OA, visibility is restricted to subscription or paper per view access. The increased visibility, on the other hand, accords increased usage as seen by repository download statistics and an increase in citations. Alma Swan states that “citations tend to rise when an author starts making his or her work Open Access” and highlights the benefits from making work Open Access as early as possible given that ‘citations feed upon citations’.
In terms of benefits to institutions, Alma Swan reports that “a repository is an excellent showcase for any university eager to build its profile and reputation”. Institutions benefit from the ‘aggregated usage and impact of their researchers’ as a result of the increased visibility Open Access brings.
By demonstrating their research portfolios, institutions can strengthen their competitive position, transfer knowledge and know-how to the education and business communities, seed potential collaborations and industrial and business partnerships, and demonstrate the value that they bring to society.
The full briefing can be found at http://www.rluk.ac.uk/files/OA Impact briefing.pdf
By Erica D McLaren, on 9 January 2012
The UCL Discovery Top 20 download statistics for December 2011 are available at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/last-month.html. The Top 20 downloads for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2011 are also available by Faculty via http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/past_stats/faculty/.
The 2004 IFS briefing paper ‘The ‘fat tax’: economic incentives to reduce obesity’ continues to be the most downloaded of the month, whilst also being the most downloaded paper Q4 2011 for the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, and the most downloaded paper overall in Q4 2011 .
New to the monthly Top 20 downloads for 2011 is the 1999 Institute for Fiscal Studies report Household Saving in the UK by Professor James Banks and Sarah Tanner.
Whilst many popular papers have been highlighted in the monthly Top 20 download statistics, such as the 2004 IFS briefing paper ‘The ‘fat tax’: economic incentives to reduce obesity’ from the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, our Top 20 downloads by Faculty for Q4 2011 highlight a larger range of popular UCL research papers.
For example, the most downloaded paper in Q4 2011 from the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences was the 2008 UCL doctoral thesis Factors Affecting Outcome of Non-Surgical Root Canal Treatment by Dr. Yuan Ling Ng.
From the Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences, the 2009 UCL doctoral thesis Nanoparticles and photosensitisers; their interactions and antibacterial properties by Dr. Naima Narband was the most downloaded item in Q4 2011.
From the Faculty of Life Sciences, the 2008 Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine Volume Superbugs and superdrugs: the history of MRSA edited by Lois Reynolds and Dr Tilli Tansey was the most downloaded item.
From the Faculty of Laws, the 2001 article Priority as Pathology: The Pari Passu Myth by Professor Riz Mokal was the most downloaded item in Q4 2011.
From SSEES, the most downloaded paper is the 2005 working paper Foreign Direct Investment and Restructuring in the Automotive Industry in Central and East Europe by Professor Slavo Radošević.
Further quarterly statistics by Faculty can be seen at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/past_stats/faculty/.
Our latest records can be found via the link on our homepage or via our Twitter feed. You can also use our advanced search options to locate items of interest.
By Erica D McLaren, on 6 January 2012
Following the upgrade to the Research Publications Service (RPS) RPS Support discovered an issue which resulted in a number of publications being incorrectly identified for people as the result of an online search. Detailed investigation found that this was related to the introduction of the Web of Science (Lite) data source.
RPS Support have now decided to turn back on searching to all the on-line data sources including Web of Science (Lite). A few users may find that their searches retrieve lots of unwanted publications. If this is the case please see the FAQs at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/staff/admin_systems/research-systems/rps-faq, or go to the contacts page (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/isd/staff/admin_systems/support#rps) so that further assistance can be provided.
By Erica D McLaren, on 13 December 2011
In the report Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth, recently published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the UK Government renews its commitment to making publicly funded research freely available and calls on the Research Councils to take steps ensure researchers fulfil funding requirements.
The Government recognises that free and open access to publicly funded research offers ‘significant social and economic benefits by spreading knowledge, raising the prestige of UK
research and encouraging technology transfer’. Whilst the Government highlights institutional open access repositories as one example of good practice in regards to making research available, it stresses the need for more research to be open access both in repositories and in open access publishing. It is concerned that a considerable amount of publicly funded research is both difficult to find and expensive to access which in turn can limit ‘understanding and innovation’.
In order to address the disparities in open access practices, the Government will look at a number of pending reports on ways to improve access to research. This will include a report by an independent working group chaired by Dame Janet Finch, a former vice chancellor of Keele University, and a report by the Royal Society.
The ‘Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth’ BIS report also looks at ways to increase the development of knowledge and innovation in the UK. The Government suggests that Higher Education consortia are beneficial in tackling ‘large-scale and ground-breaking new research beyond the capabilities of a single institution. The Government also suggests the need for greater links between research outputs and commercial products and services and has announced a new £75m fund to help small business develop new products based on research findings. The report also states that up to £250,000 will be invested in a series of prizes to be awarded to groups of people who can solve specific scientific problems.
In his open response in UCL News, Professor David Price empahises the need for long-term sustainable funding if the success of the UK research base, and related growth of the UK’s economy, is to continue. Professor Price also draws attention to the ‘broad spectrum of excellence’ in several UK universities, such as UCL, that can address research challenges ‘in a more effective way than across a consortium’.
By Erica D McLaren, on 7 December 2011
Quarterly UCL Discovery download statistics are now available by UCL Faculty for the third quarter, 2011.
The statistics can be found via the link on UCL Discovery’s Top 20 downloads page, or by going to the Faculty statistics page.
By Erica D McLaren, on 7 December 2011
The UCL Discovery Top 20 download statistics for November 2011 are available at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/last-month.html.
The 2004 IFS briefing paper ‘The ‘fat tax’: economic incentives to reduce obesity’ continues to generate unprecedented levels of interest with over 2,000 downloads for a second month.
There has also been a surge of interest in the Development Planning Unit literature review ‘Theories and models of the peri-urban interface: a changing conceptual landscape’.
There are various ways to find UCL research output in UCL Discovery. Our latest records can be found via the link on our homepage or via our Twitter feed. You can also use our advanced search options to locate items of interest.
By Erica D McLaren, on 18 November 2011
John Elmes (Times Higher Education) reported yesterday on the increased visibility and potential dissemination of UCL research as a result of adding full text to UCL Discovery and using social networking sites.
The article focuses on the Open Access approach taken by Dr Melissa Terras, UCL Department of Information Studies. By making her past papers freely available in UCL Discovery (subject to copyright permissions) and blogging about each paper, Dr Terras hopes to examine global access and download trends as part of a critical analysis of Open Access.
By Erica D McLaren, on 10 November 2011
Dr Melissa Terras, UCL Department of Information Studies, a keen user of social networking tools, has detailed in her blog the rapid increase in interest in her paper ‘Digital Curiosities: Resource Creation Via Amateur Digitisation’ that resulted in her paper being the paper the fifth most downloaded item in UCL Discovery for October 2011. This paper, only made available on an Open Access basis in UCL Discovery a few weeks ago, has already seen considerable interest on a global scale, with downloads in the USA, UK, Germany , Australia, Canada, Belgium, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, Japan, Spain, Greece, Italy, South Africa, Mexico, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Europe, and the UAE.
