IRStats

IRStats is a flexible statistics package which allows easy processing of accesses to fulltext and abstract pages of eprints.

Technical Overview

The following is a quick tour of IRStats.

Parameters

IRStats output depends on four parameters, which need to be passed as cgi parameters if called through a web browser, or in a hash if called through the Perl API. These are:

Start Date and End Date

Date parameters are implemented as separate day, month and year parameters, so these two parameters are actually six (start_day, start_month, start_year, end_day, end_month, end_year). Any statistics outside this daterange are ignored.

An Eprint Set

As well as defining a daterange, we also have to inform IRStats of which publications we are interested in. Any publication not in the set will be ignored. A set of eprints can either be a single eprint or any set of eprints the system administrator wishes to define in the config files.

View

The final parameter tells IRStats how we want to process and display the statistics. This is done by selecting a View.

Views

Views are perl modules which plug in to IRStats. They have been designed to be user configurable, though some knowledge of perl is probably required. When a query is made to IRStats, a View is created. It generates some parameters for the DatabaseInterface object, which queries the database and passes back the results of the query. The View then iterates over the database rows and processes the stats in any way programmatically possible. These processed results are then passed to a Visualisation.

Visualisations

A Visualisation takes a set of processed statistics and outputs them. For example, Visualisation::Graph::Pie creates a pie chart.

The Database Interface

The Database Interface object handles all queries to the database. Most requests for statistics can be completed with a single call to the get_stats($params) method.

Data Flow Diagram

Required Data

In order for IRStats to run, it requires two things:

• a database table containing all hits to the repository
• text files describing the contents of the repository

The Hits Table

Awaiting a redevelopment.

The Text Files

In order for IRStats to build up a picture of a repository, a number of text files need to be created and stored in the cfg/ directory:

• epstats_set_membership.txt
• epstats_set_member_codes.txt
• epstats_set_member_full_citations.txt
• epstats_set_member_short_citations.txt
• epstats_set_member_urls.txt

Explanation by Example

Imagine a very small repository. Here are its contents:

• eprints
  • (1) The Smells of Cheese
  • (2) The Tastes of Wines
  • (3) The Sounds of Oboes
• Authors
  • (1) John Smith
  • (2) Harriet Jones