Are we relying on the wrong data? Analysis of e-journal usage data at seven R1 and R2 research universities

Abstract

Using data from seven R1 and R2 universities in Ohio, this study seeks to determine the extent of usage of full-text e-journal articles stored across multiple platforms. Specifically, COUNTER 5 data is presented from five major academic journal publishers (Taylor & Francis, SAGE, Oxford, Wiley, and Springer), looking at usage within each of the publishers’ respective platforms, as well as in EBSCO, JSTOR, and OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center platform. The overarching goal of the analysis is to identify where exactly usage occurred for this e-journal content within the different platforms, especially in cases where an individual title has duplicate full-text access. Analysis of this data was conducted using Tableau and Excel. Findings raise significant questions about end-user behavior in terms of students’ and faculty’s ability to locate full text, regardless of whether it is discoverable from Google or other commercial search engines. The findings also suggest a strong connection between EBSCO usage and the academic calendar, with peak usage (as a percentage of overall usage) occurring in October, November, March, and April. Lastly, findings for Taylor & Francis e-journals within EBSCO call into question what these duplicate holdings mean for “big deal” subscription packages.

Keywords:

• COUNTER 5
• Wiley
• SAGE
• Taylor and Francis
• Springer
• Oxford University Press
• EBSCO discovery service
• electronic journals
• data visualization

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to all librarians at participating universities who generously agreed to gather and share the data for this study. This includes: Melanie McGurr and Gregory Harris at the University of Akron; Holly Talbott at Kent State University; Seth Sisler at Ohio University; Hannah Pearson at Cleveland State University; Deberah England and Karen Wilhoit at Wright State University; and Anne Kumer and Anne Trenholme at Case Western Reserve University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data discussed/analyzed in this study for University of Dayton and Case Western Reserve University is available in figshare at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25571643. Questions about data for all other universities featured in this study can be directed to Simon Robins [email protected] and will be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Notes

1 E-journal titles within EBSCO frequently have full-text embargoes for 1-2 years.

2 Mentions of “full-text downloads” or “retrievals” occurring within EBSCO’s full text holdings implies a direct download of PDFs or viewing of full text within a web browser. Crucially it implies that the user does leave EBSCO’s interface to view the full text (i.e. they are not going to an external publisher platform via a link out to view the full text).

3 OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center (EJC) is a database available to most OhioLINK consortium members and provides over 32 million full-text articles across 10,000+ journals.

4 See the “Discussion & Conclusions” section of this article for a visualization of 2022 data from U of Dayton.

5 These seven universities total roughly 150,000 students, faculty, and staff.

6 Learn more about the classifications: https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/classification_descriptions/basic.php

7 See Appendix B for these attachments and a sample email.

8 “total item requests” was chosen over “unique item requests” because the focus of this study is on the extent of usage. Moreover, any comparison with the data between the two metrics–during the analysis–did not show any difference between the two metrics, apart from unique item requests being lower than total item request; therefore, had unique item requests been used, the totals would only have been lower for each platform.

9 At the same time, the author of this study is aware of just how difficult it can be to measure all usage occurring at these institutions, not only because of usage occurring off-campus, undetected by IP addresses or proxies. The author of this study is aware of the myriad of ways a complex web of siloed administrative accounts and IP ranges can evolve within a university campus and thwart any attempt by the library to comprehensively track usage. Accordingly, this study–and the previous study–represents the usage associated with the primary administrative accounts for each of the university libraries and for each of the included platforms. At the same time, for relevant platforms, regional campus data was included in this study.

10 In 2022, sixty eight percent of Wiley e-journal requests occurred within Wiley Online Library; 25% of Taylor & Francis occurred within Taylor & Francis Online; 74% of Springer occurred within SpringerLink; 74% of SAGE occurred within SAGE Journals; 53% of Oxford occurred within Oxford Academic.

11 See Table A1 for a full breakdown of these percentages.

12 See Table A2 for a full table detailing each platform for each publisher.

13 In addition, the nature of the Taylor & Francis content, leaning more towards the social sciences, could also be a factor.

14 There is no connection between the results from this study and deciding to publish in a Taylor & Francis journal. If anything, the results found here do not reflect well on Taylor and Francis business strategy up until now, considering that unlike the other four publishers, they have been far less successful in licensing big deal packages to OhioLINK and charging these OhioLINK institutions to manage multiple subscriptions to duplicate content.