In the new reports, only the following fields are included:
ID | Title | Total | Abstract Views | File Views | PDF | HTML | Other
Previously, additional information such as Issue and Date Published was included, as well as a column for each attachment with its individual statistics. Now, all attachment stats are grouped under “Other.” This made it much easier to focus on a specific issue, subset of articles, or type of attachment directly from the CSV export, without needing additional filters.
While OJS 3.4 has a filter tool and you can technically filter by issue, I’ve tested this on our installation and it does not work correctly — even when filtering by issue, the exported CSV still includes articles outside that issue.
There is also a Files Report, but it has limitations: as noted above I cannot filter by issue, each attachment appears on a new row (would be easier if article and files associated with it is in one row), and the file name is used (rather than the galley name). This makes filtering difficult, since filenames often don’t follow a consistent format.
As a result, I’ve found that I cannot effectively use the reports for tracking stats. I’ve had to manually capture statistics instead, so I can for example include the article information, issue, published date, and stats for each file in a single row — which is much easier to work with.
The previous setup (pre v3.4) provided sufficient information in a single “master list” to allow proper filtering directly from the CSV itself, which was simpler and more reliable.
Would it be possible to restore the additional metadata into a single CSV or improve the filter features so that it works correctly for exports? Even if the issue filter is something that can be fixed, the Files report I do not find useful at all due to the issues I noted earlier.
Hope these are some things to consider for future.