No stats for ScienceDirect Web Editions and Basic Access Licenses, or: COUNTER compliancy and usage statistics: for "Premium customers" only?

[kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de]

Elsevier-ScienceDirect is listed in the 2004 Register of Vendors providing
COUNTER-compliant Usage Reports.

As Elsevier Science has announced the migration of SD Web Editions to the
ScienceDirect platform with effect from May 15, cf.

  Information for ScienceDirect Web Editions Customers, 
  From: "Menefee, Daviess (ELS)" <D.Menefee@elsevier.com>, 
  To: <reedelscustomers@lists.cc.utexas.edu>, 
  Sent: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:48:26 +0100

  and the announcement "Web Editions is moving to ScienceDirect" on 
  http://www.web-editions.com/, 

I wondered whether Elsevier would now finally be willing to provide usage
statistics to all institutional customers for all their subscribed titles,
not only to Licensees of the ScienceDirect Service and only for fully
licensed titles -- a question particularly relevant to those academic
libraries that only provide access to Web Editions and to customers that
have chosen the ScienceDirect Limited Collection Option.

Therefore I posed this as question to our regional Account manager at
Elsevier, Mr Claus Grossmann, c.grossmann@elsevier.com. His answer
(translated from German) of May 6, 2004 reads:

"... Web Editions now as well as in future represent no self-contained
product variant, but a gratuitous "Add on" to the subscribed print
journals.

The migration [of Web Editions] to ScienceDirect as it appears from the
customer's viewpoint is still based on two different underlying platforms
at Elsevier. This means that Usage Statistics will also in the future not
be available [for Web Editions], but only for fully licensed Online
Journals."

It seems rather strange in view of the above mentioned offical Elsevier
announcements about the migration of SD WE to the SD platform that
Elsevier is still trying to maintain the fiction of two different
underlying platforms when it comes to usage statistics. I accept that the
implementation of statistics reporting tools for Web Editions would have
been costly as long as it resided on a different, not fully developed
platform, but that obstacle should have been removed by now.

Interestingly, we did receive WE usage data from 2001/02 for our site
after we had told the publisher that we would have to refuse renewal of
any lapsed subscriptions unless they would provide the usage data we
needed for our evaluation and decision making (the main library had
cancelled all its Elsevier Science Subscriptions in 2002 in connection
with a serials cancellation and redesign project - that meant evaluation
of all journals, followed by highly selective renewals a year later). What
at that time required a lot of manual intervention by service people from
Elsevier (cudos to them!), should now become much easier to implement.

With the migration of the SD WE to the ScienceDirect platform, it strikes
me as short-sighted policy and not particularly customer friendly, that
Elsevier Science continues to refuse access to usage statistics for Web
Editions. Short-sighted because access statistics for Limited Collection
Customers that covered also Web Editions titles outside of the fully
licensed collection could potentially demonstrate high demand for some of
those titles, especially in the form of turnaway statistics for content
outside of the Web Edition's rolling 12 months backfile.

I should add that another large commercial publisher falls in this
category of vendors that refuse to provide usage statistics for all but
"Premium access" customers, namely John Wiley with its Enhanced vs.  
Basic Access License - they continue to refuse Wiley Interscience usage
statistics for single site (BAL) customers outside consortia even after
they started charging 5% and now 10% over the list price for a combined
print + online subscription (cf. the Admin Guide: "Comprehensive Usage
statistics are a benefit provided to EAL customers.", i.e. only to sites
that opt for unlimited, concurrent access to all titles in an
institution's collection.)

Again, in 2001 we were provided usage statistics for one year after we
pressed Wiley hard for it (albeit in print form only so that we had to key
in everything for ourselves...). So we know that the infrastructure is in
place -- it has to be since there is a single platform only.

It has always been my understanding that it should be a definitive
requirement for COUNTER compliance that usage statistics must be available
to all customers who request them. I could even accept a moderate service
charge for this but consider it totally unacceptable if this service is
reserved for consortia or premium customers only, and libraries that
prefer to choose electronic access at the title level, are systematically
denied access statistics.

I am therefore highly concerned that we have now already two vendors who
advertise themselves or their services as COUNTER compliant but refuse to
provide statistics to all their customers.

On the positive side, for Springer which until last year firmly refused to
deliver usage statistics for Basic License Customers (online free with
print), COUNTER compliant usage statistics is now available (for journals
and book series, incl. Landolt-Boernstein!). Although they are not listed
explicitely as a COUNTER compliant vendor, they offer COUNTER compliant
usage statistics via their Host MetaPress which serves as the platform for
the new SpringerLink. Since MetaPress is a multi-publisher platform,
restrictions no longer apply - voila! As far as I know the availability of
these statistics for all customers has not been advertised by Springer,
but of course this is very welcome news.

Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library

Bernd-Christoph K�mper
Universit�tsbibliothek Stuttgart, Holzgartenstr. 16, 70174 Stuttgart
- Fachreferat f�r Physik / Koordinierung elektronischer Ressourcen -
Postanschrift: Postfach 104941, 70043 Stuttgart,
Tel. ++49 711 121-3510, Fax -3502, E-Mail: kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de