Bring on the IRs!

Having been alerted to the existence of statistical tools for measuring usage of articles deposited in a number of Institutional Repositories, I have collected some very encouraging statistics about how IRs are being used in developing countries.

The number of IRs using this software (developed at the University of Tasmania) is limited at present, but the following sites are among those I found that record usage by date and by country:

- University of Otago eprints Repository, New Zealand:
http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/es/

- University of Strathclyde, UK:
http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/es/index.php?action=cumulative_usage_country

- African Higher Education Research Online:
http://ahero.uwc.ac.za/index.php?module=cshe&action=statistics&view=country

- Rhodes eprints repository:
http://eprints.ru.ac.za/es/index.php?action=cumulative_usage_country

- E-LIS Repository: http://eprints.rclis.org/stat/bycountry.html

As some examples in the table below show, the full text download usage by developing countries was very encouraging indeed. India, China, Brazil, South Africa are among the busiest user-countries, and the less scientifically advanced countries are almost all represented as you go down the usage table.

Institutional Repository	University of Otago, based in New Zealand	University of Strathclyde, based in the UK	Rhodes e-Research, based in South Africa	E-LIS, based in Italy
Period of usage	2007	2007	2007	?
Number of records in repository	666	5052	808	7525
Full text downloads
From Canada	2977	2070	10413	20934
China	4673	1649	10196	22879
India	5022	1032	27609	33125
South Africa	1029	175	120598	5556
UK	8926	12664	25392	63362
USA	16830	44270	145356	1415807
. . . .and on to several hundred other countries

Encouraged, I searched other IRs and found the same story unfolding. Multiply the number of registered IRs (> 1000) by the usage figures and you can see that developing countries are using IRs a lot! Usage will vary substantially depending on the nature of the deposited content and the working practices of different disciplines, but it is very encouraging to see how IRs are closing the N to S, S to N and S to S information gaps that we used to talk about. The low-cost nature of establishing IRs allows institutes in economically constrained countries to be part of the global research community, readily using and exchanging essential information.

The wealth of information available from the statistics at these IRs raises the hope that with time all will do so. Not only do these statistics provide a true record of the need for the research information deposited, but they even provide information on the specific research that scholars are searching, an invaluable insight into priorities for development programmes. And of course, authors will be greatly encouraged to witness usage figures of their published research, and institutes will be happy to see their organisations high on the research map.

We can earnestly hope that someone – soon – will carry out an authoritative study on the usage of IR material. This would be a magnificent contribution of value to many sectors. Perhaps someone is …?.