Ejournal usage statistics

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E-journal usage statistics

• Judy Taylor
• Grampian Information
• 18th November 2007

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Background

• the Serials Crisis
• inflation in journal prices
• concerns about value for money
• how do you count journals usage?
• reshelving counts?
• signing slips?
• ballot users?
• for online journals, it should be easier
• but....

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Counting online journal usage

• difficult to get information from the user end
• clickthroughs dont tell much
• ATHENS statistics only give accesses per package
• though they can be useful if youre analysing
  user behaviour
• statistics dependent on the publishers
• publisher fears in the early days
• statistics as a basis for cancellation
• they tend not to make it easy

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for instance....
from FT Intelligence, 15/10/2007
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Problems with early statistics

• how to get them?
• request by email from publisher?
• download sites better
• what format?
• webpages
• Excel or comma-delimited files better
• definitions
• what are we counting?

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What are we counting?

• full-text resources
• articles
• retrieved or viewed?
• what about TOCs and abstracts?
• abstracts and indexes
• sessions?
• searches?
• number of hits received?
• what about failed accesses?
• turnaways

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Project COUNTER

• launched 2002, incorporated as non-for-profit
  2003
• publishers, librarians and intermediaries
• developing standards and practice for online
  usage statistics
• definitions
• whats counted?
• comparability
• for benchmarking across your sector
• mode of provision
• ease of use
• Regularity of updating
• http//www.projectcounter.org/

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COUNTER Codes of Practice

• COUNTER code of Practice for Journals and
  Databases
• Release 2 published April 2005
• definitions of terms used
• technical information on how publishers should
  count data
• formats for provisions
• list of reports publisher can provide
• more publishers signing up
• early fears about cancellations allayed to some
  extent
• library sector taking a tough line on compliance!

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COUNTER 2 Definitions - examples

• Search
• A specific intellectual query, typically equated
  to submitting the search form of the online
  service to the server
• Session
• A successful request of an online service. It is
  one cycle of user activities that typically
  starts when a user connects to the service or
  database and ends by terminating activity that is
  either explicit (by leaving the service through
  exit or logout) or implicit (timeout due to user
  inactivity)
• Turnaway (Rejected Session)
• A turnaway (rejected session) is defined an
  unsuccessful log-in to an electronic service due
  to exceeding the simultaneous user limit allowed
  by the licence

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COUNTER 2 Reports

• Journal Report 1 Number of Successful Full-Text
  Article Requests by Month and Journal
• Journal Report 2 Turnaways by Month and Journal
• Database Report 1 Total Searches and Sessions by
  Month and Database
• Database Report 2 Turnaways by Month and
  Database
• Database Report 3 Total Searches and Sessions by
  Month and Service

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COUNTER Reports
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(No Transcript)
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What to keep?

• What are you using them for?
• benchmarking against comparable institutions
• keep what the standard requires for your sector
  e.g. SCONUL in HE
• management information to your institution
• institutional performance indicators?
• Annual Report?
• what do your funders value about your service?
• analysing changes in library role
• subscription decisions
• cancellation decisions individual title usage,
  comparison between packages
• additional titles or users turnaways
• cost-per use?

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Benchmarking HE sector

• E-measures project
• HEFCE SCONUL project 2003 - 2005
• to answer the questions why are we counting?
  and what measures are meaningful?
• looked at holdings as well as usage, and measures
  of expenditure
• http//www.ebase.bcu.ac.uk/docs/contribute/conyers
  .pdf
• basis for the inclusion of measures for
  e-collections in the SCONUL statistical report

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What SCONUL counts - holdings

• 2d. Number of unique serial titles received by
  subscription
• 2e. Number of unique titles received as printed
  items only
• 2f. Number of unique titles received in
  electronic form only
• If possible please provide the breakdown in 2e
  and 2f as the changing mode of delivery is
  strategically important.
• 2g. Number of unique titles received in both
  print and electronic form
• 2k. Number of electronic databases received by
  subscription
• Database is defined in accordance with the
  ISO27892003 collection of electronically stored
  data or unit records (facts, bibliographic data,
  and texts) with a common user interface and
  software for the retrieval and manipulation of
  the data. Include abstract and indexing,
  full-text and other databases. Include databases
  which contain full-text (e.g. JSTOR, LexisNexis).
  
• 2l. Number of electronic books

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What SCONUL counts - expenditure

• 7b. All serial subscriptions (7c7d7e)
• 7c. Subscriptions to serials received as print
  only
• 7d. Subscriptions to titles received in
  electronic form only
• 7e. Serials subscriptions received in both print
  and electronic form
• If possible please provide the breakdown in 7c to
  7e as the changing mode of delivery is
  strategically important.
• 7g. Electronic resources (7h7j7k)
• 7h. Subscriptions to electronic databases
• 7j. Expenditure on e-books
• 7k. Expenditure on other digital documents

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What SCONUL counts usage

• 4r. Number of successful requests for full-text
  articles (journals only)
• Use Journal Report 1 (JR1) for those publishers
  and vendors who are COUNTER level 1 compliant
• 4s. Number of successful section requests for
  electronic books

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What else do we count at RGU?

• database usage - sessions by month
• why?
• performance / proving our usefulness
• subscription / cancellation decisions
• turnaways
• why?
• subscription decisions
• FT titles in what SCONUL classes a database
• this is a substantial part of our service that
  SCONUL obscures
• Business Source Premier 3218 titles
• LexisNexis 85 titles
• individual title usage
• not stored, but extracted ad hoc if value of
  subscription in question

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The process at RGU

• database of admin urls and passwords held
  centrally in Access
• inc whether they supply stats and whether
  COUNTER-compliant
• quarterly (or so) routine of pulling the usage
  stats systematically
• copy and paste into an Excel spreadsheet
• totalled for SCONUL at end of calendar year
• takes a person-day or so per quarter
• and there are always problems
• change of publisher platform archive can be
  lost
• journals may move publisher and become
  non-compliant
• still quite a lot of publishers
  non-COUNTER-compliant

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The future - analytic

• cost-per-use analysis
• research continues but
• difficult to make comparisons across subjects
• some comparatively low-use resources are still
  must-haves
• what do you factor in as cost?
• subscription only?
• subscription VAT?
• support staff time?
• the fact of availability online may boost usage
• its awfully far to walk to the library

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The future - technical

• COUNTER for ebooks and reference works
• Release 1 published March 2006
• SUSHI
• NISO (US counterpart of COUNTER) developing a
  protocol for automated harvesting of statistics
• http//www.niso.org/schemas/sushi/
• E-resource management systems
• developing to store licence data and usage
  statistics
• e.g. ExLibris Verde will be SUSHI-compliant