Project Report of the Benchmark Statistics Service (BEST)

Abstract

As part of the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories' aim to improve the management of scholarly digital assets, the Benchmark Statistics Service project (BEST)i was designed to enhance the type and quality of statistical information about repository holdings and usage. The problem to be solved relates to the strategic need for better, standardised, statistical information to inform a wide range of policy and funding decisions within the scholarly communications cycle. In order to address this need support was secured for APSR to manage a short pilot project, which was initially envisioned to include the production of a pilot harvesting and aggregation service. Due to personnel and time restraints the project scope was revised in October 2007 to identify an approach and initiate the design of a pilot service, providing the framework for further development. Show more