CORAL Usage Statistics
CORAL Usage Statistics provides a solution for storing and managing usage reports for your electronic resources. The module allows you to import and store Counter 4 and 5 reports and also provides functionality to setup SUSHI harvesting. You have the option to import COUNTER reports manually into CORAL, or set up SUSHI connections to run imports on a scheduled basis.
CORAL Usage Statistics has four major components in the primary navigation at the top of each page.
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Home
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File Import
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SUSHI
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Admin
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Report Options
New statistics reports are uploaded through the Home page. CORAL Usage Statistics currently supports JR1 and TR_J1 reports or any report that has been formatted according to COUNTER standards. All reports must first be saved as tab delimited text files before being loaded into CORAL.
On the left column of the page are the options for loading the statistics reports. Notice that there are two checkboxes which accompany the Upload feature. Be sure to check the box indicating which type of file you are uploading.
When processing a new file, CORAL will try and determine whether the statistics being loaded already exist in the system. For example, if January and February statistics for any given year for a specific publisher already exist in the system CORAL will not import those months again on subsequent loads. The ‘Override previous month verification’ checkbox is available if the user wishes to bypass this check and to re-import all of the data.
One the right column of Home is a list of all imported files sorted by most recent. The list includes a time and date stamp for the upload, the file name, the user who uploaded the file and detail showing the number of titles processed. All uploaded files are saved in their original format on the server and made available in case they are needed in the future. CORAL produces a detailed log file of the upload which includes any errors that may occur. This log file is also made available through the Home page.
When a new file is loaded the data is first displayed on screen before it is committed to the database. This allows the user a chance to scan the data for errors before deciding to either confirm the upload or to cancel.
When a new file is loaded an entry for each Platform and Publisher combination listed in the file is created. It is through the Publisher / Platform page that the information about each Platform and Publisher is accessed. This includes the statistics data as well as the administrator login required to download new reports from the publishers’ website. The ‘view/edit’ link brings the user to the following detailed information page for the publisher or platform selected.
Seen here is the platform record. The information is separated among four tabs; Logins, Notes, Statistics and Titles. The Logins tab contains the administrator username/password login required to download new statistics reports. This information can be added in two ways. First, the login can be added to the record using the ‘add new login’ link. This opens a new pop-up edit window where the login type, username, password, url and any pertinent notes are entered. Alternatively, if the login already exists in the Organizations module a link to the Organization record can be added. This will then display any matching logins from the Organizations module here in CORAL Usage.
In the above picture, a link to the Organization record in CORAL Organizations has been entered. The ‘view organization’ link will bring the user directly to the record within CORAL Organizations. Any account logins that exist on the organization record will be displayed here within CORAL Usage Statistics. This allows for a single point of entry for all account logins within CORAL Organizations. Logins can however still be entered directly within CORAL Usage Statistics if preferred.
The Notes tab allows the user to identify the years for which statistics are available as well as identifying which years are COUNTER compliant reports and which years are not. Also available is the Interface Notes field. This field is displayed to library personnel within the Usage Reporting Add-On page explained later in this document. It is meant for public notes that give added context to the statistics.
The Titles tab displays all of the titles that were included in the uploaded reports for each Platform and Publisher. A quick scan of this page after loading a new report will allow the user to check for any data problems such as duplicate titles or missing ISSN information.
The Statistics tab shows all the statistics which have been loaded for the specific Platform or Publisher sorted with most recent year first. The data for each year can quickly be opened for viewing in Excel using the ‘view spreadsheet’ link. It is also possible to delete the data for individual months.
CORAL Usage Statistics also offers the ability to view and edit outlier use. When new statistics are loaded into the system, CORAL processes the data title by title and month by month. For each title, the system compares each new month’s data against the previous twelve months’ average. The system will tag the month as an ‘outlier’ if the new month’s data is significantly higher than the expected range of use. Consider for example a journal which averages ten downloads per month but then in a new report one of the months shows two thousand downloads. Two thousand is significantly higher than expected and CORAL will flag this month as an outlier. This is an extreme example but in the case of individuals creating personal article archives is not entirely uncommon.
Through the ‘view outliers for this month’ link the user has the ability to either ignore the outlier, marking it as acceptable, or to override the outlier with a number that makes more sense and excludes the problematic use spike. CORAL Usage Statistics allows for three levels of outliers. The three levels or formulas for the outlier check are edited on the Admin page discussed next and are also color coded yellow, orange and red with red being the worst and most extreme outliers.
There are three sections on the CORAL Usage Statistics Admin page; Users, Email Addresses and Outlier Parameters. When adding new users to the system there are only two privilege levels available; admin and add/edit. There is no view only option available. The Usage Reporting Add-On offers a reporting page which will be the primary way library personnel acquire and download statistics reports. The statistics module is then meant as the back-end system through which the statistics are managed and as such needs to be accessed only by staff responsible for loading and managing the reports.
The ‘Email addresses for logs’ section identifies which addresses will receive an email with a link to the log file created for each new uploaded report.
The Outlier Parameters section is where the user will edit the outlier formula used to identify use spikes. There are three levels. The Level 1 example in the above picture will flag an outlier if a specific month’s use is at least fifty more than two hundred percent above the previous twelve month average. The formula includes more than a simple percentage over the previous twelve month average in order to avoid low use titles being flagged with outliers. The following is an example scenario.
A journal consistently receives two article downloads per month but then the next month has thirty downloads. There is a significant percentage increase from two to thirty and as such this would be flagged as an outlier but with only thirty downloads the total use is still not very significant. The addition of the ’50 over’ the percent increase will cause the system to ignore any use lower than fifty downloads regardless of the percentage increase from the previous twelve month average.
If the Usage Reporting Add-on is installed, the Report Options page will appear. This page allows editing of the values that display in the Provider / Publisher report parameters in the Usage Reporting Add-On. The Publisher and Platform names used by CORAL Usage Statistics come directly from the Publisher and Platform columns in the uploaded statistics reports. Unfortunately the names included in those reports are not always the names most familiar to users. The Report Options page allows for a local display name to be added for each Platform and Publisher using the ‘edit report display name’ link. ‘CJO’ for example is the Platform name used on the Cambridge Journals COUNTER report. It makes sense in that case to add a display name for ‘Cambridge Journals Online’ or something similar so that the value could be recognized in the Provider / Publisher dropdown in the Usage Reporting Add-On.
CORAL Usage Statistics also offers the ability to control which Platforms and Publishers display in the dropdown menu in Usage Reporting. MetaPress for example is a Platform which contains many publishers, some of which library personnel may not use or need to query. The Report Options page offers the ability to select the ‘Available as Default Report’ checkbox for each Platform and Publisher which should appear within the dropdown menus in the Usage Reporting Add-On. Adding every Platform and Publisher to the dropdown menu may result in a dropdown which is too long to be used. The checkbox allows for only the relevant Platform and Publisher names to be included.
The Usage Reporting Add-On offers a clean and easy to navigate reporting page which library personnel can use to access and download the statistics reports. Please see the Usage Reporting Add-On Technical Documentation for installation instructions.
There are five different reports available.
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Provider Rollup: Total full text downloads per year for each Provider
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Publisher Rollup: Total full text downloads per year for each Publisher
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Top Journal Requests: Most used journals
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Yearly Usage Statistics: Summary YTD totals listed by title for all years
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Statistics by Provider / Publisher: The standard JR1 article downloads reports
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Statistics by Title: Search by individual journal title or ISSN
In addition to the available reports is the option to check the box labeled ‘Do not adjust numbers for use violations’. This checkbox pertains to the outlier use mentioned earlier in this document. When a use outlier is identified CORAL offers the option to manually enter in an override number as a replacement for the questionable outlier use. The ‘do not adjust numbers for use violations’ checkbox enables the user to see either the original data as imported or the manually entered override number.
To control which Providers/Publishers appear in the drop downs, refer to the ‘Report Options’ section, above.
The selected report is displayed on-screen as in the following picture with the option to then export to Excel.
image example, Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests By Month and Journal
The query parameters are displayed in the top right of the page along with a link to modify the parameters and icons for both printing and exporting the report. The report in this example was for all 2009 data from the MetaPress platform. Please note the ‘view related titles’ link that appears below each title in the list. This link opens a new window and will display all of the available statistics in the system for the specific title regardless of publisher or platform.