Evaluative Usage-based Metrics for the Selection of E-journals

Abstract

To measure the value of print journals, librarians have gathered a range of statistics and developed a variety of metrics. Similar work to assess the value of e-journals has just begun. This article explores the usefulness of available e-journal usage statistics and develops three metrics and three benchmarks based on those metrics. The proposed metrics build on earlier work that assesses the value of print journals, although the earlier work is modified extensively to fit the e-journal arena. The e-journal statistics and metrics are further transformed to address a completely new area of application: the evaluation of potential purchases. Statistics and metrics are used to build three benchmark measures for assessing e-journal candidates for purchase. A comparison of Science and Nature site licenses illustrates the utility of the assessment benchmarks. The benchmarks, metrics, and statistics developed here provide a reliable framework for assessing both current collections and candidate collections of e-journals. Implications for standards development are clear; content measures are desperately needed for the development of an effective suite of e-journal statistics.

Mendeley readership altmetrics for the social sciences and humanities: Research evaluation and knowledge flows

“…Concepts related to journal usage metrics have appeared with different terms such as readership , usage , and downloads in the literature (Kurtz & Bollen, ). Journal usage metrics refer to indicators based on the usage data of electronic journals (Rowlands & Nicholas, ) that provide reasonable evaluation of the journals (Hahn & Faulkner, ), such as downloads or accesses. Similarly, readership has been defined as “full‐text downloads” (Haque & Ginsparg, , p. 2211) or “electronic accesses” of a particular article (Kurtz et al., , p. 111).…”

Can electronic journal usage data replace citation data as a measure of journal use? An empirical examination

“…For example, the idea of "content adjusted usage" 30 , which is a metric consisting of the number of full-text accesses divided by the total number of articles online for that journal, and is a way to "compare the usage of journals that offer widely different numbers of articles online" 31 could be explored to see whether there is a correlation with impact factors. Nevertheless, findings from the current study call into question using impact factors for local library decisions on journal collections.…”

Kirjaston verkkokäytön mittaamista kehittämässä

“…Blecic ym. 2001;Peters 2002;Stemper & Jaguszewski 2003;Hahn & Faulkner 2002;Coombs 2005;Nagra 2009;Conyers ym. 2017).…”