Measuring Usage: A Comprehensive Analysis of a Social Work Journal Collection

Abstract

This study examines what can be learned about a library's electronic social work journal collection from usage statistics, survey data, faculty publications and an examination of open access (OA) availability. A collections analysis was completed using data from two main sources: a custom collections report created by 1Science and results of a faculty survey on their top journal choices for teaching. After creating a list of journals important to the field of social work, top journals were identified by article downloads, facultyauthored publications, and references to faculty-authored papers. A brief publications analysis using faculty websites and author searches in Web of Science was also completed, to provide local, contextual data. Journals were searched in SHERPA/RoMEO to determine their OA level and archiving policy. Library coverage for the journals was also included in the analysis. Results show that the McGill Library has access to almost all of the journals identified as important to social work. Nearly one third of publications authored by the McGill School of Social Work since 2006 are OA, and more than half of the faculty in the school have at least one article published in an OA journal. While this is a good start for librarians who want to help faculty and students understand OA publishing and access, there is room for outreach in this area. While these results will aid librarians supporting faculty, students, and practitioners in the field of social work, a secondary aim of the study is to demonstrate a method that can be used by librarians undertaking similar analyses in other fields. Collection Analysis This study uses four measurements to determine 'usage': article downloads, publications written by McGill researchers, references made by McGill authors, and top journals as identified by faculty for teaching. The first result pertains to the 1Science report's category of Social Work journals. Within that category, Children and Youth Services Review was the top downloaded journal. See Table 1 for the top 10 journals by downloads in 2015, as per the 1Science report.

An Analysis of Music E-Journal Usage at McGill University

“…McKinnon and Tummon adopted a similar approach. They used the same McGill University 1Science and Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) Journal Usage Project (JUP) Faculty Survey reports used in this paper-as well as faculty publications lists-to analyse McGill's social work journal collection for faculty support and to identify potential gaps 10 . In their collection analysis, one finding was that "each tool and usage measurement provided a different set of 'top' journals with minimal overlap between them" 11 .…”