From: William Park <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 10:41:22 -0700

Toby,

Regarding your question:
> Does anyone (STM, perhaps?) have data on journal article downloads worldwide?

this is from the STM 2015 Report:

"Researchers’ access to scholarly content is at an historic high.
Bundling of content and
the associated consortia licensing model has continued to deliver
unprecedented levels
of access, with annual full-text downloads estimated at 2.5 billion,
and cost per
download at historically low levels (well under $1 per article for
many large customers)."

Bill Park
CEO
DeepDyve


> On May 1, 2016, at 4:31 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 09:30:25 +0000
>
> This is interesting, but the numbers need to be put into context
> (always a good idea with numbers - to put them in context). I have no
> idea, for example, how many articles are being downloaded from Science
> Direct, JSTOR, or other platforms and repositories in order to gauge
> whether SciHub's 28 million is 'small', 'medium' or 'large'. For what
> it's worth, OECD Publishing's downloads last year were 28 million (so
> we're running at around 50% of SciHub) but our catalogue is much, much
> smaller - we have around 200,000 items on our platform, a far cry from
> SciHub's 50 million. Does anyone (STM, perhaps?) have data on journal
> article downloads worldwide?
>
> However, this data does support a conjecture that we have at OECD: the
> potential audience is always far larger than one thinks. I recently
> had one of our authors say her latest paper would have an audience of
> '200' and she swore blind that it wouldn't be any larger. Based on our
> past performance with similar papers, I reckon we'll reach twice or
> three times that number. This thinking is quite widespread. I was
> recently challenged at a conference, at which I had shared data on the
> growth in accesses to our content following the introduction of our
> freemium publishing model, by someone arguing that OECD content was
> somehow different from scholarly content published in journals and was
> bound to have a larger audience. I countered by stating that 40% of
> OECD populations are now educated to first-degree level as are many in
> non-OECD countries, especially in places like Iran, China and India.
> Therefore, the potential audience that has the skill and ability to
> read a journal article is really very large indeed. The data from
> SciHub seems to be proving the point.
>
> The final anecdote about ease of discovery and access is sobering . .
> . If we (publishers and librarians together) can't get this right,
> especially at subscribing institutions, then we're failing badly. But,
> this brings me back to the first point - the context of this data.
> What is the share of SciHub downloads at subscribing institutions? If
> it becomes significant, then we are failing, if it isn't, then we're
> not.
>
> Toby Green
> Head of Publishing
> OECD