Re: Ejournal use data, was: Elsevier and cancellations

[David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu>]

The availability of electronic versions of journals has, as all the
contributors to this discussion agree, made it possible for the first time
to get reliable statistics on what is actually used. (Why it is being used
and whether it should be being used are fascinating questions which could
be discussed more productively once we have some valid basic data.)

The minimum basic data which is needed is:

1. The number of accesses for each title.
2. The number of different articles accessed for each title.
3. The number of articles in each title receiving  0, 1, etc.  access.
It would aid interpretation if this were collected by a reasonable time period
like each month.

Desirable additional data for bibliometric purposes would be:
1A. The number of accesses for each publication year of the title
2A. The number of different articles accessed for each year of the title.
3A. The number of articles receiving 0, 1, etc. access for each year of the
title. 

I cannot see why any publisher or any library would object to making this
data publicly available. It contains no individually identifying
information; it contains no information that could appropriately be
considered proprietary. A publisher does run the risk that some of its
titles might be shown have very low use, but then it surely hopes that
some might be shown to have very much higher use than expected. (I will,
personally, suspect that any publisher that will not permit this data to
be released does in fact have good reason to know that all or most of its
titles are not much used, and I will make collection decisions
accordingly.)

There is much additional data that might be collected. some of it may
conceivably be held to be give to much specificity; some of it might be
too voluminous:

4. The number of accesses, for each individual issue. 
5. The number of accesses, for each individual article. 
6. The distribution of the accesses among the different library branches or
service units.

Although Lance S. is concerned about user privacy, this library and I am
sure most others take good care to ensure that anonymous access is
available in the library; I hope we are will also specify that no data
associating access with a specific out of library terminal be collected or
at least be retained. (There does need to be some provision for
investigating abuse of the licensing terms.)

I think we would all be especially interested in some of the analyses that
Kent M. says

> are becoming common-place among OhioLINK institutions

and I suggest that the internet may be more appropriate than formal
publication for such specialized time-sensitive and data-rich
compilations.

David G.
-- 
David Goodman 
Biology Librarian, Princeton University Library 
dgoodman@princeton.edu         http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/
phone: 609-258-3235            fax: 609-258-2627