Trumpeting Your Success: The Impact of Annual Reports

It’s summertime and now is the perfect time to create your annual IR report, where you can show the impact your repository has had on furthering your institution’s goals, as well as the benefits your IR has provided for your stakeholders over the past year. We’ve seen these reports increase funding and support for the IR and engage new stakeholders in the year to come.

The Digital Commons community is full of talent and creativity in crafting annual reports including:

  • Quotes and stories from faculty, students, staff, deans, and global readers
  • Examples of IR publishing directly supporting institutional goals
  • Images of the Readership Maps and Dashboard metrics
  • Lists of the number of departments and centers publishing in the IR
  • Lists of top downloaded theses, faculty papers, journal articles, yearbooks, etc.
  • Readership and increased number of issues for journals
  • Community outreach and CEL collections
  • Metrics and partnership information on new Special collections

May the reports below inspire you and save you time creating your own! Thank you to the hard-working admins who make these valuable reports openly available. Enjoy your summer and do reach out to your Consultant or the Digital Commons email listserv if you’d like any help creating a powerful report showcasing your year’s success.

PDXScholar Annual Report 2018
Portland State University’s report includes powerful quotes from IR users and faculty contributors such as “PDXScholar makes it so easy ‒ that’s why you have a good reputation among faculty.” The library team organized it beautifully: it begins with an overview “PDXScholar maximizes research impact, facilitates interdisciplinary research, and expands the reach of Portland State University scholarship worldwide.” Then there are highlighted examples of IR success such as “New benchmark: over 1 million downloads in 2018,” “371 theses and dissertations were digitized and added to PDXScholar,” and “35% increase in full text downloads.” They continue with sections on the success of their publishing program in each arena: conferences, journals, OER textbooks saving students money, faculty scholarship, noteworthy projects.

Scholarly Communications Report on Activities 2016-17
Janelle Wertzberger, Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications, opens the report on a strong statement: “2016-17 was another year of growth for The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College.” The report immediately lists accomplishments such as increased readership and number of items uploaded. It includes categories featuring “work exclusively available in the IR” as well as “notable initiatives” such as promoting Open Educational Resources published in the IR supporting both faculty and students.

2016 Annual Report for Digital Commons: The Legal Scholarship Repository @ Golden Gate University School of Law
Janet Fischer, Collection Development Librarian and IR admin, prepared a great report outlining the way the IR supports the institution’s mission and goals. It highlights the major accomplishments of DC@GGULaw over the last year and starts with a bang: a quote from the Law School Dean that begins “The Digital Commons has been a great way for the Golden Gate University School of Law community to extend our reach to scholars and readers around the world.”

Dominican Scholar: Year Two: A Growing Repository: Annual Report to the Vice President of Academic Affairs Academic Year 2015-2016
IR admin Michael Pujals has prepared a two-year year report on the growth of Dominican Scholar, the institutional repository for Dominican University of California. The report discusses repository successes, areas for improvement, and areas for growth. It includes effective success stories such as a local government agency downloading a student thesis on housing policies 72 times as well as DC Dashboard metrics, maps, and global readership specifics.