Apologies for cross-posting
I’m glad to announce that the RepositóriUM
(
https://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/) team at Minho University has
finished the development and packaging of new versions of the Statistics
and Request-Copy Add-ons to DSpace. This new versions (1.1) of the
Add-ons are mainly an upgrade for DSpace 1.4.x, but there are also new
features in both Add-ons:
Statistics Add-on:
- Detection, processing and distinction of access/downloads from the
repository institution
- New 3:4 country flags (Courtesy from Arthur Sale)
Request Copy Add-on:
- Change access to Open Access option at the end of the replying process.
The new versions of the Add-ons are available on the DSpace Wiki:
http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/StatisticsAddOn
http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/RequestCopy
We are planning to work on a 2.0 version of the Statistics during 2007,
with improved interface, new statistics, graphic representations of data,
etc. If you’re using, or plan to use the statistics add-on, and
want to discuss and/or contribute to the development of the DSpace
statistics, please contact us using the following email address:
repositorium_at_sdum.uminho.pt.
A description of both add-ons is included below.
Statistics Add-on
The Stats system is an add-on to the DSpace platform. This system is
responsible for the gathering, processing and presentation of access,
content and administrative statistics generated by DSpace usage. It was
developed based on the principles and some of the components of the
statistics application created and released by ANU. Despite the fact that
the development was made to respond to the specific needs of
RepositóriUM, the system is completely adjustable to other environments,
because their components can easily be configured, changed or extended,
to respond to different information needs.
Important features of the Statistics system:
* Real time processing of event logs
* Database based stored mechanism of statistics
* Real time detection and processing of access country origin
* Detection, processing and distinction of own institution access
* Semi-real time detection and exclusion of crawlers
* Definition of user Access policies at individual statistic and data
level
* Customizable statistics queries
* Customizable web interface look and feel of each statistic
REQUEST COPY ADD-ON
It was suggested by Stevan Harnad that we develop a "request eprint by
email" feature for DSpace, similar to one that has recently been
implemented in GNU Eprints for deposits whose full-text access privileges
are set to Restricted Access (RA) rather than Open Access (OA), in order
to tide over any RA period with facilitated email access. The Request
Copy Add-on is this feature developed initially for DSpace 1.3.2 and now
also available for DSpace 1.4.
The purpose of this feature is to increase both the content deposited in
Institutional Repositories (IRs) and its immediate usability by providing
a way to accommodate the (frequently unfounded) worries of authors and
their institutions about copyright infringement during any publisher
embargo periods on public self-archiving, by creating a semi-automated
mechanism whereby would-be users can request and authors can email an
individual copy of a full-text deposited with access set as RA.
This feature will be very important for advancing OA if universities and
other research institutions adopt the Generic Model for an Open-Access
Self-Archiving Mandate
(
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html). In this
model, depositing immediately (upon acceptance for publication) is
mandatory whereas setting deposit immediately to OA is merely encourages,
leaving the decision up to the author.
This is how the “Request Copy” feature works:
1- In all non-OA items (we consider non-OA all DSpace items/files that
have access different from Anonymous) there is a link to a “Request
a Copy to the author” Form, activated in the View/Open link and
also on the “Restricted Access/Request-a-copy” logo that we
added at the side.
2- The requester must enter his/her email address and name, and may add a
comment, and press a “Request-a-copy” button.
3 – An email is sent to the depositor (either one of the authors,
or their designee). The text of the mail is configurable (in our case we
made an express statement to forward the mail to the author(s) if the
depositor is not author). The email message contains a token.
4 – Using that token, the author may reply, by just clicking in one
of the two buttons available: “Send Copy”, “Don’t
send copy”.
5 – After choosing the Send/Don’t send reply, the author is
presented with one of the two message models (also configurable and
editable) for the reply. Finally, the author must hit the Send button,
and the message (including the file(s) if the author chose the Send
option) is sent to the requester.
6 – At the end of the process the author is presented with the
option to change the access to Open Access. The author must enter his/her
name and email address and hitting a button “Change to Open
Access”. If the author chose to change the access to Open Access, a
message is sent to the repository administrator(s) that must manually
change the access level.
Best Regards,
Eloy Rodrigues
Universidade do Minho - Serviços de Documentação
Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga
Tel: +351 253 60 41 50; Fax - 253 60 41 59
Campus de Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães
Tel: +351 253 51 01 19; Fax - 253 51 01 17
Received on Wed Feb 07 2007 - 01:51:57 GMT