Integrate KnowledgeArc Matomo Statistics with DSpace

We are excited to announce the launch of our first integration of Matomo statistics with a DSpace digital archive. This brings together two leading open source projects, and provides DSpace users with a way to easily identify the impact of archived assets through easy-to-understand metrics.

Why Matomo?

Matomo (formerly Piwik) is the leading open source analytics platform and is used on more than a million web sites. It is highly customizable, providing tools for capturing custom metrics. And Matomo will capture download metrics out-of-the-box, a feature which some of the leading analytics services don’t provide.

Most importantly, Matomo is open source; this means you own both the data and the code, something most other analytics services do not offer. In fact, migrating your data off of some other analytics services can cost tens of thousands and there is often no easy way to import your data into a new system. You are also at the mercy of the service’s user agreement; if they change features or decide to shut down your account, you will lose everything forever.

What about DSpace Statistics

DSpace provides its own analytics engine but there are a number of drawbacks which makes it unreliable.

There are other, 3rd party integrations, such as Google Analytics and Plum Analytics but they also come with various drawback. With services such as Google Analytics, your metrics are owned by the provider and it may be impossible to get access to your data if you decide to migrate away from Google’s service. Alternatives such as Plum may require considerable upfront and ongoing costs.

Matomo Statistics in action

Matomo provides a number of methods for displaying metrics within DSpace. Developers can embed widgets, or use third party libraries to display easily viewable charts and graphs

A live example of Matomo Statistics / DSpace integration is available at: https://sigma.nursingrepository.org/handle/10755/623082.

More to come…

In coming blog posts we will dive deeper into the metrics that a Matomo and DSpace integration is capable of producing.