UKnowledge Visualizes Global Reach of UK Research

Since UK Libraries launched UKnowledge as the university's institutional repository in late 2010, UKnowledge has collaborated with various campus partners to collect, organize, and provide free worldwide access to the research and scholarship created by UK faculty, staff, and students. UKnowledge now holds nearly 11,000 items including: books, journal articles, research reports, videos, images, theses, and dissertations. The aggregated download count for UKnowledge is climbing steadily to the two million mark. 

A world map on the UKnowledge homepage now visualizes downloads in real time. When an item is accessed, a pin drops onto the map to indicate where the download originated. The item’s title and the download location are displayed on the panel above the map. Clicking the item’s title opens up the record of the item, which provides bibliographic information such as the author(s), abstract, publication date, and source of publication. To view the download history, click the back arrow on the panel or bring up an enlarged map and click the pins there. This feature of UKnowledge presents a clear picture of the global reach, readership, and potential impact of UK-based research and scholarship. 

If an item in UKnowledge has a digital object identifier, a colored ring in the record of the item will reveal how much "buzz" the item has generated online. Fed with the data gathered by the article-level metrics company Altmetric, the ring uses colors to represent distinct online information sources that have mentioned the item. For example, below is the ring for the journal article "Bed Bugs Evolved Unique Adaptive Strategy to Resist Pyrethroid Insecticides," by Dr. Subba R. Palli and his colleagues in the UK Department of Entomology. 

The red indicates that six news outlets, including BBC News, International Business Times, National Geographic, and Scientific American, reported the article. The other colors demonstrate that the article was noted on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Clicking the see more details link will bring up a categorized account of the online mentions of the article. The score in the ring is one measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that this article has received. According to Altmetric, Palli’s article is in the top five percent in "buzz" among the 3,468,825 journal articles Altmetric has tracked. Just like the world map above, this new feature of UKnowledge offers a vivid visualization of worldwide interest in research and scholarship based at UK. 

Meanwhile, UKnowledge tracks the download rates of the available items and sends authors monthly download reports by e-mail to inform them of the readership and potential impact of their items. Together, these tools help UK researchers gain a comprehensive view of how their works are received in academia and beyond. 

UKnowledge is a strategic initiative created and managed by UK Libraries to enable unbridled global access to the unique research and scholarship contributed by members of the UK community.  If you would like to make scholarly content available in UKnowledge or learn about services pertinent to academic publishing, visit this guide or contact Adrian Ho, director of Digital Scholarship at UK Libraries.  For information about article-level metrics, see this page of the research impact metrics guide.