Case study: visibility and usage of an institutional repository

The School of Electronics & Computer Science at the University of Southampton in the UK was one of the earliest examples of the implementation of an Open Access repository. it was also the earliest example of a mandatory policy, requiring researchers in the School to deposit each research output when it was ready for publication. The repository is a model of sustainability in that the researchers (or their assistants) do the depositing (not the library) and deposits roll in reliably week in and week out throughout the year.

The repository has almost 12000 items in it now. The usage of the repository is measured in terms of the number of times papers are downloaded from it each day. The chart below shows the usage the repository has enjoyed during 2008. The average number of times papers are downloaded from the repository each month is around 30000.

This level of usage is not out of the ordinary. The large repository at the University of California, the e'-Scholarship' repository, has so far seen 7.5 million downloads of the 26500 articles it houses. Downloads run at a rate of around 20000 per week.

This kind of visibility and usage of an institution's research outputs is only possible through Open Access. Closed Access journal articles never attain this kind of usage and readership. It is important to note that downloads do rather effectively predict later citations, so an institutional repository is helping to boost the eventual citation impact of research from an institution.