Evaluative usage-based metrics for the selection of E-journals

College and Research Libraries

Volumn 63, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 215-227

  Hahn, Karla L ^a   Faulkner, Lila A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 23044534370     PISSN: 00100870     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5860/crl.63.3.215     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. Barbara Meyers and Janice L. Fleming, "Price Analysis and the Serials Situation: Trying to Solve an Age-old Problem," Journal of Academic Librarianship 17, no. 2 (May 1991): 87, 86-92.
2. Henry H. Barschall, "The Cost of Physics Journals," Physics Today 39, no. 12 (Dec. 1986): 34-36;
3. _, "The Cost-Effectiveness of Physics Journals," Physics Today 41, no. 7 (July 1988): 56-59.
4. For example, see American Mathematical Society, Journal Price Survey (1994 - 2001) (Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, 2001), available online from 〈http://www.ams.org/membership/journal-survey. html〉;
5. Journal Price Study: Core Agricultural and Biological Journals (Ithaca, N.Y.: Faculty Taskforce, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, 1998), available online from 〈http://jan.mannlib.cornell.edu/jps/jps.htm〉;
6. Meyers and Fleming, "Price Analysis and the Serials Situation."
7. George Soete, Measuring the Cost-Effectiveness of Journals: Ten Years after Barschall (Madison, Wis.: UW-Madison Libraries, 1999), available online from 〈http://www.library.wisc.edu/projects/glsdo/cost.html〉.
8. University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, Journals & Journal Articles - Introduction (Madison, Wis.: UW-Madison Libraries, 2001), available online from 〈http://www.wisc.edu/wendt/journals/jintro. html〉;
9. University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, More Information about Journal Cost per Use Statistics (Madison, WI: UW-Madison Libraries, 1999), available online at 〈http://www.wisc.edu/wendt/journals/costben/mcostben. html〉.
10. Donald W. King and Carol Tenopir, "Designing Electronic Journals with 30 Years of Lessons from Print," JEP the Journal of Electronic Publishing 4, no. 2 (Dec. 1998), available online from 〈http://www. press.umich.edu/jep/04-02/king.html〉.
11. In If You Want to Evaluate Your Library (Champaign, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1988): 8-9,
12. F. W. Lancaster reflected this thinking in his discussion of one of Ranganathan's Five laws of Library Science: "Books Are for Use." Under this principle, libraries must consider the cost-effectiveness of their resources "because of limited resources, $30 spent on a book that is little if ever used is $30 less available for an item (possibly a duplicate copy) of something that might be in great demand."
13. An even larger question, which this analysis does not attempt to answer, is how to compare the value of print and electronic journals. As we develop means to more effectively assess and estimate the value of e-journals, it is also time to reassess the value of print journals with increasing subscription costs. As Suzanne D. Gyeszly has pointed out in "Electronic or Paper Journals? Budgetary, Collection Development, and User Satisfaction Questions," Collection Building 20, no. 1 (2001): 10, 5-10: "Until sufficient and standard use data are unavailable [sic], the library must pay for dual subscriptions for paper and online versions, as contracts with major e-journal providers such as Elsevier do not presently allow cancellation of paper subscription, despite heavy use of electronic subscriptions of the same title."
14. Pioneering work in the development of standard e-journal statistics, based on early work with the JSTOR project, has occurred under the auspices of the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC). See International Coalition of Library Consortia, Guidelines for Statistical Measures of Usage of Web-based Information Resources (December 2001 Revision of Original November 1998 Guidelines), available online from 〈http://www.library.yale.edu/ consortia/2001webstats.html〉.
15. A more recent critique of e-joumal statistics has been offered by Judy Luther in White Paper on Electronic Journal Usage Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2000), available online from 〈http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub94/contents.html〉.
16. The Association of Research Libraries funded the development of a set of metrics for electronic resources including e-journals. See Wonsick Shim, et al., Measures and Statistics for Research Library Networked Services: Procedures and Issues, ARL E-metrics Phase II Report (Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 2001), also available online from 〈http://www.arl.org/ stats/newmeas/emetrics/phasetwo.pdf〉.
17. Luther, White Paper on Electronic Journal Usage Statistics.
18. International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), Guidelines for Statistical Measures of Usage of Web-based, Indexed, Abstracted and Full-text Resources, available online from 〈http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/ pub94/contents.html〉.
19. Linda Mercer, "Measuring the Use and Value of Electronic Journals and Books," Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, no. 25 (winter 2000), available online from 〈http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/00- winter/article1.html〉.
20. Deborah D. Blecic, Joan B. Fiscella, and Stephen Wiberley, "The Measurement of Use of Web-based Information Resources: An Early Look at Vendor-supplied Data Using ICOLC Guidelines," College & Research Libraries 62, no. 5 (Sept. 2001): 450, 434-53.
21. Meyers and Fleming, "Price Analysis and the Serials Situation," 87.
22. Mercer, "Measuring the Use and Value of Electronic Journals and Books."
23. High Wire Press, the Internet imprint of Stanford University Libraries, hosts more than 250 science, technology, and medicine journals online. The home page for High Wire Press is located on the Web at 〈http://highwire. stanford.edu〉.
24. High Wire Press, Detailed Online Article Counts, available online from 〈http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/artcounts.dtl〉,
25. and Usage Statistics, available online from 〈http://highwire. stanford.edu/lists/usage.dtl〉.
26. Issue level data also might reflect a relevant unit of content for users, but these data were unavailable for analysis.
27. With the exception of Science, all the High Wire Press subscriptions include both print and online access for one price. This raises the dilemma of how to calculate an e-journal's subscription price. Several methods could be used, but what is important is to use a consistent approach. One sensible method is to use the price of the print/online bundle. Alternatively, when comparing online resources where access is priced independently of print subscription, as is the case with Science and Nature, the price of online access is the reasonable datum to use.
28. Note that the full-text accesses summarized in the attached statistics are not unique. An access event is counted regardless of whether it is to an article previously accessed or to a new article. For example, a single article in Science may be viewed in HTML format two times and downloaded as a PDF file once. Each of these accesses would be counted, giving a total of three "articles accessed."
29. Luther, White Paper on Electronic Journal Usage Statistics.