Open Science Labs

Analytics

Open Science Labs Website reports

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The first successful refresh will populate these reports. Missing data does not mean zero visits.

Refreshes are scheduled daily at 06:23 UTC.

OSL-published data sourced from Google Analytics. Consent choices and blockers can exclude visits; recent figures may change during processing.

Methodology, reporting scope & limitations

How we measure #

This is OSL-published data sourced from Google Analytics 4 (GA4) via the Google Analytics Data API. It is not an independent audit or a guarantee of sponsorship reach. Only the aggregate fields in the downloadable report are published; no visitor identifiers or raw API responses are included.

  • Pageviews (screenPageViews): counted website page views, including repeated views of the same page. The Web platform filter excludes app screens.
  • Active users (activeUsers): distinct users GA4 classifies as active, based on engagement and applicable first-visit or engagement signals. This is queried over each entire selected period, not added from daily totals. It is not a count of all visitors or a census of individual people.
  • Sessions (sessions): sessions that began during the reporting period, as measured by GA4. A user can have more than one session.

All dates are inclusive calendar dates in the GA4 property's reporting timezone, shown above. The default summary covers 30 completed days ending yesterday at the last successful refresh. The date selector also offers 7 and 90 completed days when the snapshot supports them. Each period's summary is queried independently. Comparisons use the immediately preceding period of the same length, not the previous calendar month. A previous zero has no meaningful percentage baseline.

The daily chart switches between pageviews, active users and sessions. Daily active-user points are distinct counts for individual dates: do not sum them into the period total. The comparison line aligns the previous period by day index, using the same scale; date inspection and the table show both exact dates. Monthly pageviews cover up to 12 completed calendar months independently of the selected window. The current month is excluded.

Missing dates and months are marked Not reported, with gaps in the chart; they are not invented as zeros and may predate collection. Explicit zero counts mean no measured traffic for that query, not necessarily no actual visits.

The hostname scope above is an exact allowlist, combined with a Web-only filter. Other hostnames, including previews and localhost, and app traffic are excluded. This is website traffic, not OSL's combined audience across social media, community platforms, or other websites.

Audience breakdowns #

  • Countries show pageviews by GA4's country dimension. This is approximate activity location, not nationality or residence. VPNs, proxies and location determination can affect it.
  • Devices show pageviews by deviceCategory (such as desktop or mobile), not a count of distinct devices or people.
  • Channels show sessions by sessionDefaultChannelGroup, GA4's rule-based classification of how sessions started. This is session acquisition, not a user's first-ever acquisition channel or a campaign attribution audit.
  • Pages show pageviews by pagePath, restricted to canonical public routes derived from this MkDocs website. Unknown paths, noncanonical aliases and routes no longer in the current site are excluded. Query strings, full URLs, GA-supplied page titles and visitor identifiers are never published. Page totals can therefore be lower than headline pageviews.

Each panel uses the same selected window and hostname scope as the headline. Up to ten named categories are ranked by their additive metric. A category needs at least ten activeUsers over the full period to be named; smaller, remaining and unclassified categories are combined as Other / unknown. Those per-category user counts are used only for grouping and are never published or summed into headline users. Grouping reduces detail; it is not a formal anonymity guarantee. No city, visitor or cross-category breakdowns are published. Page statistics are restricted to known public routes as described above. Smaller/remaining known page routes are labeled Other public pages, not unknown visitor paths.

Shares use each panel's returned total, including Other / unknown, not the headline user count. Rounded shares may not add to exactly 100%. Dimensioned and headline reports may differ during processing or because of reporting semantics; we do not adjust them to force agreement. A retained older snapshot may lack comparisons or audience panels; that absence is not zero traffic.

Table search and sorting affect only that table, not the headline totals or other reports. CSV downloads contain the currently selected daily metric or filtered dimension table, with reporting dates and provenance. The JSON contains all published windows. This is a daily-updated public reporting tool, not realtime GA4 access or an arbitrary-date/cross-dimension query interface. Older snapshots keep unavailable controls disabled; no statistics are invented for missing periods.

Limitations and freshness #

Measured traffic can exclude visits affected by consent choices, blockers, disabled JavaScript, or collection errors. Identity settings, estimation, and cross-device behavior can affect user counts. Recent figures may change during GA4 processing. Every refresh re-queries the current and comparison windows, daily and monthly histories, and all breakdowns, so earlier figures can be revised too. A zero report warrants checking collection and scope before concluding that nobody visited the site.

Refreshes are scheduled daily at 06:23 UTC, and are also attempted when website changes reach main or a maintainer runs a manual refresh. GitHub Actions scheduling may be delayed. If a refresh fails, we retain the previous successful report and its original timestamp. A report more than three days old is marked stale. If GA4 explicitly signals a privacy threshold or metric access restriction for an audience breakdown, that panel is marked Not published, not zero. A restriction on core statistics, sampling, truncation, unavailable data, or a failed request instead retains the entire previous report. We never publish partially fetched rankings or label a failed attempt as a successful refresh.

Metric definitions follow Google's GA4 Data API schema. See also Google's data freshness guidance. The endpoint follows our versioned JSON schema. New exports use version 3; older version 1 and 2 snapshots remain readable without changing their original refresh timestamp.

Support open science #

Help sustain our open-source tools, mentorship, and community programs. Explore OSL sponsorship.

Last update: 2026-09-17
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