OpenAIRE’s Usage Counts service contributes towards impact evaluation of usage activity in Open Access Repositories. This is realized by the generation of comparable, consistent, standards based usage statistics across publishing platforms that take into account different levels of scholarly information: the usage of data sources, the usage of individual items in the context of their resource type, the usage of individual web resources or files and the usage of resources among different repositories.

Discover more information about the Usage Counts service at:
 https://usagecounts.openaire.eu/

OpenAIRE’s Usage Counts service uses the Matomo Open Source Analytics platform (matomo.org) to track usage activity. It collects and analyzes usage data from the network of OpenAIRE content providers and exploits usage metrics like downloads and metadata views. Tracking of usage activity is performed by exploiting the Open Source Matomo analytics platform. In addition, usage statistics reports can be collected from SUSHI-Lite compatible endpoints.

Statistics are generated using the COUNTER Code of practice directives. The analysis uses the COUNTER rules and the latest robots.txt files as provided by the library and the IT communities. Moreover, and taking advantage of OpenAIRE's Graph service de-duplication mechanism, it aggregates/merges usage stats that come from different sources and relate to the same object.

To benefit from this service, the repository has to be registered in OpenAIRE through the PROVIDE Dashboard for content providers.

Metrics Configuration & Software Details

The service has to be enabled for the repository in the OpenAIRE PROVIDE Dashboard, accessing the menu "UsageCounts". This step results in the generation of two unique identifiers:

• a Matomo-ID that associates the repository with its usage events in Matomo platform;
• an authentication-ID that allows to track usage activity on the Matomo platform.

After the generation of the identifiers the repository manager has to perform the following steps:

1. Download the tracking code for the repository platform. The code is maintained on Github:
   • as a patch for various versions of DSpace (https://github.com/openaire/OpenAIRE-Piwik-DSpace)
   • as an Eprints plugin for version 3 (https://github.com/openaire/EPrints-OAPiwik)
   • as a python script for all other cases (https://github.com/openaire/Generic-Matomo-Tracker)
2. Follow the instructions in the code README files and configure the tracker;
3. Deploy the tracking code in the repository.

OpenAIRE Usage Counts Guidelines

The guidelines are aimed to provide orientation for data source managers about participation in the OpenAIRE Usage Counts Service and about the methods and standards used to collect and process usage data in order to generate comparable, standards-based usage statistics. The guidelines follow the Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for e-Resources supplemented by the IRUS-UK Code of Practice.

Webinars

UsageCounts: Complementing traditional scholarly impact indicators with usage activity
(July 2022)

• Presentation
• Recording

OpenAIRE metrics service: usage statistics 
(December 2017)

• Presentation
• Video

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