How to use your Dashboard
What can I see in the Dashboard?
Publishers, in your Dashboard, you can see usage data for your own published works. You can see the usage of the books you have published in terms of views and downloads. You can also view which countries and institutions are using your books, and which subjects are represented in your collections.
Features to explore:
Reset - click “Reset” at the top of the page, or “Reset filters” to the right of the filters selection
Search by author name (currently displayed as last name, first name) - learn more in ORCID’s documentation about first and last names)
Track usage over time - from the “Overview” page, see which month has the highest usage numbers when all book titles are selected
See usage for a specific title - from the “Overview” page, select a book title from the filter and see the total access number
See usage across geographic regions - from the “Global Reach” page, select a country from the country filter and see on the number of book downloads and the number of chapter downloads. Countries and territories are based on ISO standard 3166.
Which data sources have country, institution, and city information?
Google Books, JSTOR, and OAPEN Counter 5 usage data have information about usage by country.
JSTOR usage data has information about usage by institution.
OAPEN Counter 4 and Counter 5 usage data has information about usage by city.
How can I download a report for a single title, author, country or subject?
Look for the “Download report” button in the footer of your Dashboard. Click “Download report” to filter each Dashboard page depending on the items you would like displayed. If the “Download report” button is not present, this option is not enabled for your Dashboard.
How can I export data from the Dashboard?
If data export is enabled for your Dashboard, the “Download report” button will be present in the footer of your Dashboard. To export data for each visualisation, click the “kebab” icon (three vertical dots) on the top right of the visualisation, then click “Export”.
Does the OAPEN data include both Counter 4 and Counter 5 data?
Unless otherwise noted, OAPEN data includes both Counter 4 data (C4) and Counter 5 data (C5).
How do I use the filters?
By default, filters are set to show all entries.
Click on a filter and select the checkbox at the top to select or unselect all items in that list.
Click “only” to the right of any item to see results for that item only. You may select multiple items from the list.
Use the text field to enter text to search for a particular item.
To reset the filter, click "Reset all filters" at the top right of the dashboard menu bar to select all items again
I’m not yet participating, but can I see a demo?
You may view the BAD template Dashboard, powered by usage data from the University of Michigan Press which they have very kindly made publicly available, with no login details required.
How should I interpret the data from the Dashboard?
Presenting a holistic view of usage information can be difficult, because eBooks can be hosted in multiple repositories and platforms, in different file formats (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, HTML), and in different levels (whole book or by chapter). Each repository provides book content to different audiences in different ways.
Before studying data from the Dashboard, we suggest that you take some time to understand the data sources, including the limitations of comparing different data sources. Learn more about how usage is influenced by the language of the work, its subject, its platform, and seasonal differences in Ronald’s blog post and research paper, “Measured in a context: making sense of open access book data”.
Caveats:
For publishers with a smaller number of titles, it’s harder to see a pattern and understand why some get more downloads than others
Incomplete data can hamper making accurate comparisons
But all that said, the Dashboard can help you explore some interesting questions!
Publishers, here are some questions the Dashboard data can help you consider:
In which countries and territories are my publications most and least downloaded?
Does this correspond to the languages in which I’m publishing?
Which subjects are most or least popular in different areas?
How does this change over time?
How can I share information from the Dashboard?
It’s easy to share information from the Dashboard - you can export data for further exploration in a spreadsheet, and visualisations to share with colleagues.
If sharing is enabled for your Dashboard, click more (three dots icon) > Export (to export in CSV and other formats); and click Download report (at the bottom of the page) to export a PDF report.
When sharing Dashboard information, we recommend including some explanation to help your recipient interpret it in context. For this, you are welcome to reuse information from the section How should I interpret the data from the Dashboard? above, and include links to this documentation.
Example: how to create a link to the Dashboard filtered by a particular author
Adjust your dashboard view and filters to show what you wish to share; for example, with the filter set to show usage for a single author or title.
Look for the “Share” button at the top right of the Dashboard page and click the down-arrow to its right
Click “Get report link”
To create the standard link to the Dashboard WITHOUT filters: make sure that the “Link to your current report view” checkbox IS NOT set
To create the standard link to the Dashboard WITH filters: make sure that the “Link to your current report view” checkbox IS set (will not work if the browser window is in incognito mode)
Copy the “Link to share”
Please note:
A dashboard link will only open the Dashboard if the logged-in Google account has been given access, or if the link is made public.
If you send someone a link to a filtered view, they can remove the filter and see all the unfiltered data.
This method of obtaining links to the Dashboard will not work for any Dashboard that is embedded in a website; you need to start from the direct Dashboard link.
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