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Digital Collections @ Suffolk User's Guide

Use this guide to help with using Suffolk's Digital Commons site, Digital Collections @ Suffolk.

Research Impact Tools

Digital Commons provides a variety of personalized reporting tools for authors with works published in Digital Collections @ Suffolk. As an author, you can easily access your dashboard to view current download information for every work you publish, as well as global insights into the sources of readership.

Monthly Readership Reports

Monthly emails are delivered automatically to authors’ inboxes. These reports detail combined download counts for all of the author’s full-text articles published to the repository. Monthly Author Readership Reports also contain a link to the Author Dashboard, which provides detailed statistics about the author’s published work. Just make sure to include your email address in the author metadata for each submission.

Tools in the DC @ Suffolk Author Dashboard:

  • Readership section: shows where and how users are accessing your content geographically, by institution, and over time. 
  • PlumX Metrics: used to assess and share impact based on usage, captures, mentions, social media and citations), it also shows up on each work uploaded to the repository.
  • Usage Reports: Run reports showing downloads, metadata page hits, works posted, or individual works for the content and time frame selected.
  • Sharing:  share saved dashboards with stakeholders to demonstrate impact with no login required, here’s a sample one for CAS Honor’s Projects.

To get started using the Analytics Tools, follow these steps: 

  1. Create an account in DC @ Suffolk and submit your work
  2. Once you have content uploaded, Digital Commons will start tracking statistics on your works.
  3. Access your Author Dashboard, by logging in to  Digital Collections @ Suffolk (https://dc.suffolk.edu/)

    Select My Account in the upper right hand corner

  4. Use the Dashboard Tabs to switch between the following screens:

    Readership: Get a comprehensive picture of where and how users are accessing content geographically, by institution, and over time.
    Usage Reports: View reports for downloads, metadata page hits, works posted, or individual works within the time frame selected.
    PlumX Metrics: See the full impact of your work with a variety of article-level insights and alternative metrics.
    Share the Dashboard: Access saved dashboards and share links to quickly demonstrate impact to others with no login required, and track the number of views.
  5. Browse Digital Commons's Help Guide for more detailed information about how to create, use, and share reports