Re: Project COUNTER Progress Update - 5 years on

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

> At 05:46 PM 5/16/2007, Gillingham Emily wrote:
>
> Since the launch of the first COUNTER Code of Practice in 2002, 
> libraries around the world have been able to compare and 
> contrast the usage for different journals and databases across 
> different subjects from different publishers.
As a former member of the Executive Board of Project COUNTER, and 
as a former science librarian, I only have great respect and 
admiration for this organization, its leadership, and its 
dedicated board members.  Yet the standardization of downloads 
and reports has not resulted in panacea whereby librarians can 
simply compare usage across different publishers.  In a study of 
six COUNTER-compliant publishers [see below], we report very 
large differences in download patterns across publisher 
interfaces -- even controlling for identical journal content. 
As a result, there needs to be more work on this front before 
librarians are persuaded that they can simply compare the usage 
of journals and databases across publisher platforms.  At the 
least, Project COUNTER should be cautious in making 
over-simplified statements that can result in erroneous beliefs 
by those who are responsible for making sound collection 
decisions.  At worse, publishers may exploit this myth to 
artificially inflate and manipulate the numbers they report.

eJournal interface can influence usage statistics: implications 
for libraries, publishers, and Project COUNTER.

Philip M. Davis and Jason S. Price
JASIST (2006, vol 57, issue 9, p.1243-1248).
copy available: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/

The design of a publisher's electronic interface can have a 
measurable effect on electronic journal usage statistics. A study 
of journal usage from six COUNTER-compliant publishers at 
thirty-two research institutions in the United States, the United 
Kingdom and Sweden indicates that the ratio of PDF to HTML views 
is not consistent across publisher interfaces, even after 
controlling for differences in publisher content.  The number of 
fulltext downloads may be artificially inflated when publishers 
require users to view HTML versions before accessing PDF versions 
or when linking mechanisms, such as CrossRef, direct users to the 
full text, rather than the abstract, of each article. These 
results suggest that usage reports from COUNTER-compliant 
publishers are not directly comparable in their current form. 
One solution may be to modify publisher numbers with 'adjustment 
factors' deemed to be representative of the benefit or 
disadvantage due to its interface.  Standardization of some 
interface and linking protocols may obviate these differences and 
allow for more accurate cross-publisher comparisons.


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Philip M. Davis
PhD Student (and former Science Librarian)
Department of Communication
336 Kennedy Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
email: pmd8@cornell.edu
work phone: 607 255-0354
web: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/