AEIOU – increasing the visibility of academic research in Wales

"We are pleased to announce that the WRN consortium has been successful in their bid for further JISC funding. The AEIOU (Activity data to Enhance and Increase Open-access Usage) Wales project will run for six months and starts this week. The AEIOU Wales project will provide a cost-effective and sustainable shared national service based on open standards that will benefit Welsh HEI partners by improving the quality, impact and productivity of their academic research. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that the majority of user traffic into an institutional repository is generated through hits from Web search engines such as Google. Searchers will be directed towards a single item or record having no additional incentive to look for further relevant information within the repository. The purpose of the proposed AEIOU Wales project is to increase the visibility and usage of all academic research by aggregating Welsh institutional repository activity data to provide a “Frequently viewed together” recommendation service, such as those used by Amazon and many other e-commerce websites...."