McNamara 20140911 Bepress author utilization counts cannot be trusted due to poor design and support

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20140912 update: bepress support finally 'gets' my problem and should have my author counts fixed soon.

I have left the text below and the original download as is.

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Email exchange 9/2014 (also available as a PDF download):

Your bepress system “database” is pretty lame if there is no way for your team to correct this ‘bot inflation.

You are serving an academic research community that has a very high expectation in the quality of our scholarship and data. That you cannot correct “bad numbers” is a bad mark on your operation.

From now on, I will assume that all bepress author’s utilizations are badly skewed by problems that your organization is unable to deal with.

Instead of marketing new services like “digital commons network” your organization should focus your attention on providing high quality services to your current customers and problems like I encountered.

Sincerely,

George

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From: bepress Support Team [mailto:support@works.bepress.com]

Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2014 6:02 PM

To: McNamara,George T

Subject: Re: [Ticket#10918115] How do I delete a category of referrers ... one 'event' is skewing my utilization?

Hello Dr. McNamara,

Thank you for your patience. I regret that the referrer information cannot be removed from your Author Dashboard. Our technical team discovered that a bot was temporarily inflating download numbers for the June time period, which has since been resolved. However, the previous log data needed to adjust the "www.google.com.hk" referrer counts on your Author Dashboard is no longer available.

Let me know if you have any questions. I can be reached by phone at 510.665.1200 Ext. 2 or by email to support@works.bepress.com.

Kind Regards,

[staff employee]

P.S. Interested in free online access to thousands of scholarly articles from universities and colleges worldwide? Check out the Digital Commons Network at http://network.bepress.com/.

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09/03/2014 06:39 - McNamaraGeorge T wrote:

Dear bepress,

How do I delete a category of referrers ... one 'event' is skewing my utilization? … around June 2014 www.google.com.hk had 3990 downloads. If 0.01% of all residents of Hong Kong each downloaqded one file, that would be great. But I am under the impression that was 3990 downloads (or attempts) from one place (possibly within one day), and it would be better to purge those ‘clicks’ from my utilization. If it is easier for Bepress Support to do it directly, please do so.

http://works.bepress.com/gmcnamara