Content in Iowa Research Online was downloaded 131,084 times in January, a 19% increase over January 2015. The items receiving the most use were all theses:

• Oxidation and reactivity of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde, a reactive intermediate of dopamine metabolism
• Nurse manager competencies
• Design of wind turbine tower and foundation systems: optimization approach
• Three essays on the customer satisfaction-customer loyalty association
• Chemical, physical and mechanical properties of nanomaterials and its applications

The items with the greatest percentage increase in use compared with the previous month were

• Oxidation and reactivity of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde, a reactive intermediate of dopamine metabolism
• Christine de Pizan’s Advice to Prostitutes
• An investigation of bootstrap methods for estimating the standard error of equating under the common-item nonequivalent groups design
• A pharmacokinetic receptor-based recirculation model for target-mediated disposition drugs
• David Day interview, “Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others”

These include theses as well as an article in Medieval Feminist Forum and a book review podcast.

If you are interested in all of our usage data for all series, we have links to the data on our website.

While their total downloads was not the highest in IRO, these items had the greatest percentage increase of use in December compared with November.

• Compulsory Homosexuality and Black Masculine Performance
• Massacre of the innocents: poems
• ACT process measures : specificity and incremental value
• The Educational Weekly, Number 021, May 24, 1877
• Class Struggle at the Door: The Origins of the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947

These five items include a dissertation, a book from UI Press, an issue of 19^th century magazine and a two journal articles. One of the journal articles come from our locally published journal, Poroi.

Our most downloaded items in December were very similar to the top items for November:

• Twitter Data Stream: Obama McChrystal
• Design of wind turbine tower and foundation systems: optimization approach
• Three essays on the customer satisfaction-customer loyalty association
• Nurse manager competencies
• Chemical, physical and mechanical properties of nanomaterials and its applications

The twitter data stream had the most use by far.

We regularly look at usage information for Iowa Research Online. The software shows us the 10 items receiving the most downloads overall (total use is averaged out across how long the item has been publicly (freely) available), which allows new items to enter the top ten. However, this list tends to remain similar from month to month (and day to day). Looking at the number of downloads for a specific month sometimes highlights different items, but typically the most used items remain similar across months.

The most used items for November were:

• Twitter Data Stream: Obama McChrystal
• Design of wind turbine tower and foundation systems: optimization approach
• Nurse manager competencies
• Three essays on the customer satisfaction-customer loyalty association
• Estructura y forma en “El poema de mío Cid.” (Hacia una explicación de la imitación poética de la historia de la epopeya castellana)

Other than the first item, they all appear on the most popular papers list.

In order to find other items that are seeing an increase in their usage, we have begun comparing the use of an item with the previous month. These items may not have had the largest use overall, but the number of downloads was quite a bit higher in November than in October.

• Machine-learning classification techniques for the analysis and prediction of high-frequency stock direction (a 2014 dissertation in Business Administration)
• Oxidation and reactivity of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde, a reactive intermediate of dopamine metabolism (a 2011 dissertation in Pharmacy)
• Fly in the Buttermilk: The Life Story of Cecil Reed (a 1993 UIPress book)
• Flora Northern Iowa Peat Bogs (an Iowa Geological Survey article from 1908)
• Relative identities: father-daughter incest in Medieval English religious literature (a 2011 dissertation in English)
• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study investigating the effects of torso geometry simplification on aspiration efficiency (a 2010 thesis in Occupational and Environmental Health)

Congratulations to the authors of the works!

By far the most heavily used collection in Iowa Research Online are our theses and dissertations. Most of the items in the collection are from the last decade, either from graduates who voluntarily submitted their thesis electronically or dating from after December 1999 graduation when electronic submission required by the Graduate College for all non-M.F.A graduates. All of them are freely available worldwide (after an embargo period, if requested).

We have also digitized a small number of older theses. We digitize items when requested by an interested reader, with the copyright holder’s permission. We are also posting digitized out of copyright theses as time allows. As one would expect, these items do not receive nearly as much use as the newer theses. However, we are pleased to see that they are receiving steady use, far more than the print theses circulated.

In all, these 217 theses have been downloaded 20,966 times, used on average once every 5 days. In fact, six items have averaged more than 1.2 uses/day, including two that have been downloaded more than 1000 times!  In early May 2010 we ran a report to count circulation of theses, with data covering the previous five years. The highest use of any thesis was 60 circulations. The 2nd highest number was 16. Only 5,695 showed any circulations (average circulations 2.6 for those that circulated and 0.7 overall). 

If you are interested in having your thesis digitized and added to our open access collection, please let us know by submitting this permission form (PDF).

We are very excited that after a hiatus of over twenty years, the journal Dada/Surrealism has been relaunched. It is a peer-reviewed, open-access electronic journal sponsored by the Association for the Study of Dada and Surrealism and published by the International Dada Archive, University of Iowa Libraries, with managing editor Tim Shipe.

The newest issue focuses on Surrealism and Egypt.  Issues in process will focus on Dada, Surrealism, and Romania and on Dada and Surrealist Exhibitions.

The University of Iowa Libraries hosts the journal in our institutional repository, Iowa Research Online. The software provides peer review software for the editors as well as a good display for each issue. Each article is available as a PDF and also in html.