California Digital Library » Chan Li

2008 Usage Statistics: Journal, Database and E-book Update

Chan Li — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:25:13 +0000

By Chan Li, CDL Library Data Analyst

2008 annual UC systemwide aggregated and campus-by-campus usage statistics for selected major Tier 1 and Tier 2 journals, databases and e-books are now available on the Inside CDL website at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/usage_statistics.html.

Besides the two types of reports provided during the past few years, ejournal article downloads and database searches and sessions, CDL has begun to include e-book section download reports. For Springer e-books, the first systemwide e-book pilot, usage reports are included by campus and subject. Usage can be viewed by Springer subject categories. As new Tier 1 and Tier 2 e-book packages become available they will also be included in these reports.

Last year, several large publishers had problems reporting usage data for their content. Elsevier ScienceDirect usage downloads were overstated by about 13% for the months of August 2008 to December 2008 for the UC libraries. This made the 2008 ‘full year’ Elsevier usage statistics overstated by about 5%. The reports are in the process of being corrected and have not yet been included in the 2008 annual usage reports. Wiley has not yet provided July-December 2008 usage data for their Blackwell content. CDL is working with these publishers to resolve the problems and will post the corrected reports when they are available.

One of the observations from reading the 2008 usage reports is that there are wide variations in some reported statistics. Some of the changes may reflect actual usage trends and some may result from anomalies in the data. Below are some possible reasons for the usage changes:

New content or backfiles have been added
New features or links implemented on the interface associated with full-text access
Data mining activities
More external entry points for the full-text content, e.g., Google Scholar
Greater use of Google Scholar and other search engines instead of A&I databases, resulting in usage declines for those databases
Research interest changes on the campuses

In addition, some publishers are now providing and end-users have begun using software that allows users to easily download multiple full-text articles simultaneously. For example, since September 2008, Elsevier has partnered with Quosa, a document download software company, to allow users to download up to 20 PDF versions of full-text research with only a few clicks. CDL will be monitoring the effect these new tools may have on UC usage reports.

CDL will continue to monitor resource usage for identifiable trends and investigate those databases and journals with unusual usage patterns.

For more information, contact Chan Li (Chan.Li@ucop.edu).

Journal and Database Usage Statistics Update

Chan Li — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:50:02 +0000

By Chan Li, CDL Data Analyst

2007 UC systemwide and campus-by-campus aggregated usage statistics for selective major Tier 1 and Tier 2 journals and database are now available on the Inside CDL website at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/usage_statistics.html#2007

Two types of reports are included: Ejournal articles viewed by campus and Database searches & sessions by campus. The aggregated annual reports represent a better consortial view of all the campuses’ data with two years trends. Some resources included here are not covered by ScholarlyStats service at present. The CDL reports are selective and not every publisher or vendor provides usage statistics. CDL will monitor usage for newly licensed resources.

Usage statistics are an important metric for collection analysis. Combined with other metrics, usage statistics have been applied in the title adjustment process and in publisher negotiations. Usage data may be misinterpreted due to a variety of reasons. Web crawlers and harvesters are increasingly common in the academic environment and are already causing usage data anomalies in CDL licensed resources. One example discovered in the 2007 statistics was that data mining at one of the campuses in the Linguistics department inflated the usage for the journal Science.

Beginning in 2008, two new accounts will be added to UC statistics: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory library and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory library. There will be 13 user accounts total. ScholarlyStats is continuing to expand its list of platforms. More about ScholarlyStats service: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/scholarlystats.html

New Nature Journals Available

Chan Li — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:20:29 +0000

By Teri Vogel (UC San Diego), Resource Liaison for Nature journals

The UC campuses now have access to the newest titles in the growing collection of Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journals.

The multidisciplinary Nature Nanotechnology (launched in Fall 2006) will publish significant and quality papers covering all aspects of nanoscience and nanotechnology, including "the design, characterization and production of structures, devices and systems that involve the manipulation and control of materials and phenomena at atomic, molecular and macromolecular scales." Refer to http://www.nature.com/nnano/about/index.html for more details about the journal’s scope. Along with research articles, readers will also get news and views, review articles, letters, commentary, book reviews and research highlights.

Launched this year, Nature Photonics (http://www.nature.com/nphoton/about/index.html) seeks to publish the same high-level quality research as other NPG physical sciences journals, covering everything from "the fundamental properties of light and how it interacts with matter through to the latest designs of optoelectronic device and emerging applications that exploit photons."

Readers can expect to find articles on topics like lasers, sensors, biophotonics, and quantum optics. Along with research and review articles, research highlights, letters and news and views, Nature Photonics will also take a look at the technology/business side with sections like "Out of the Lab" and "Product Focus."