The University of Wollongong's institutional repository, Research Online, has now had a million full-text downloads.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The millionth paper to be accessed was a 2006 conference paper by Faculty of Informatics academics Katina Michael, A. McNamee and MG Michael entitled "The Emerging Ethics of Humancentric GPS Tracking and Monitoring."
Mr Organ said the Michaels are some of the strongest supporters of Research Online, with more than 160 items on the site.
"I am absolutely delighted," Katina Michael said. "Research Online has been instrumental in getting our research out to the wider community—fellow academics, industry, government and citizens. It is such a powerful tool."
"An academic has the ability to control the release of their papers at any point throughout the publication process… but I think the real contribution of Research Online has been in forming cross-institutional and transnational networks."
Research Online also gives academics the ability to see which of their papers are the most popular, and Katina Michael says this has been useful for her research.
"My fellow collaborators and I have been able to gauge which papers are being downloaded most and when. We can then make some basic assumptions about the significance of various research endeavours and direct our efforts accordingly."
