Over 23,000 downloads of KU Pilot Collection titles from 154 countries

 

Summary

In March 2014 Knowledge Unlatched started to unlatch books in its Pilot Collection, making them available to anyone in the world to read or download for free on a Creative Commons licence. This was the culmination of a behind-the-scenes process of loading the titles onto our partner host platforms: OAPEN and HathiTrust. The books became live on the OAPEN platform first – followed soon after by HathiTrust. The final book in the Pilot Collection was published and made OA on 2 September.

You can view a list of Pilot Collection titles and download them via the KU collections website here.

OAPEN Statistics

The period covered by the data below is from 11 March to 31 December 2014. The data provided pertains to downloads from OAPEN’s website only and is COUNTER compliant. This means that raw download figures have been filtered according to a standard methodology, in order to ensure that the numbers represent real downloads rather than the activity of online bots. OAPEN work with IRUS-UK, a Jisc-funded repository and infrastructure service.

Stats by Collection

Published titles in Collection: 28
Total number of downloads since 11 March: 23,159
Mean average number of downloads per week: 605

Monthly Chart 2014

Readers in at least 154 countries downloaded books from the collection.

Stats by Title
Mean average number of total downloads by book: 827
(Range per book: 176 – 1,822 each)

Global impact Number of countries downloading KU titles: 154*
*The country of origin for 391 downloads could not be identified.

Mean average number of total downloads by country: 148

Top 20 countries:

 COUNTRY NUMBER OF DOWNLOADS PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL
1. United States 5,933 25.5%
2. United Kingdom  3,024 13%
3. Germany  1,860 8%
4. China  1,754 7.5%
5. Canada  915 4%
6. Australia  831 3.5%
7. France  783 3%
8. Ukraine  754 3%
9. The Netherlands  701 3%
10. India  430 2%
11. Portugal  424 2%
12. Israel  254 1%
13. Italy  231 1%
14. Poland  230 1%
15. Iran  229 1%
16. Spain  213 1%
17. Indonesia  203 1%
18. Belgium  196 1%
19. Brazil  170 1%
20. Turkey  164 1%
Rest of world  3,860 16.5%

Top 20 countries

Internet Archive Statistics

All but one of the books in the KU Pilot Collection are available on Creative Commons Non-Commercial licences that allow for sharing with others, as long as it is for non-commercial purposes. This means that users have permission to share PDFs with each other directly via email or messenger. It also means that the books can be made available for download for platforms other than OAPEN and HathiTrust, which KU is partnering with directly. One book is on a CC BY ND licence which allows others to use commercially.

This approach to licencing is already helping to increase the reach of the KU Pilot Collection titles. Unglue.it has posted the majority of the books in the Pilot Collection to the Internet Archive, increasing their visibility and discoverability and helping to promote the KU project and the publishers that are engaging with it.

The Internet Archive’s website does not indicate a starting date to their reporting period nor have all of the books in the Collection been uploaded yet. However, here are the statistics that we were able to obtain (status: 2 February 2015). These statistics are available for anyone to read.

 TITLE Author NUMBER OF DOWNLOADS
My Voice Is My Weapon David A. McDonald 254
Understanding the Global Energy Crisis Eugene D. Coyle, Richard A. Simmons 212
China's iGeneration Matthew D. Johnson, Keith B. Wagner, Kiki T. Yu, Luke Vulpiani (Eds.) 171
Electronic Iran Niki Akhavan 145
Beastly Journeys Tim Youngs 127
Human Rights and Democracy Todd Landman 115
Verse and Transmutation Anke Timmermann 84
Making and Unmaking in Early Modern English Drama Chloe Porter 83
Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece Alan H. Sommerstein, Isabelle Christiane Torrance (Eds.) 73
Constructing Muslims in France  Jennifer Fredette 58
In Search of the Amazon  Seth Garfield 56
Law, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Terrorism Roger Douglas 55
Partisan Gerrymandering Erik J. Engstrom 48
The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction Jarlath Killeen 40
Aging Gracefully in the Renaissance Cynthia Skenazi 33
Fighting for a Living Erik Jan Zürcher (Ed.) 31
Ever Faithful David Sartorius 31
Governing Failure Jacqueline Best 28
Biological Relatives Sarah Franklin 28
Passionate Amateurs Nicholas Ridout 27
Composing the Party Line David G. Tompkins 24
Networks and Institutions in Europe's Emerging Markets Roger Schoenman 16
Thinking and Killing Alon Segev 16
The World Jewish Congress During the Holocaust Zohar Segev 15
On Global Citizenship James Tully 13

TOTAL DOWNLOADS (up to 02/02/15): 1783
AVERAGE DOWNLOADS PER BOOK: 71


 

HathiTrust Statistics

We hope to present statistics for HathiTrust’s digital library soon.

 

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