From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 13:26:22 -0500

Message of wide interest, courtesy of Gary Price's infoDOCKET.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gary Price <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 12:23 PM

via infoDOCKET
http://www.infodocket.com/2013/12/18/new-study-looks-at-usage-patterns-of-academic-journal-articles/

From AAP:

The following independent study analyzes the usage pattern of articles
published in over 2800 academic and professional journals. It
identifies the “half-life” of journals — the amount of time it takes
for articles in a journal to receive half of their lifetime total
downloads — and is the first major broad-based report conducted on
this topic.

Phil Davis, Ph.D., an independent researcher and former science
librarian, analyzed lifetime usage data from 2812 journals
representing the works of 13 scholarly publishers in 10 distinct
scholarly disciplines including life sciences, engineering, social
sciences and the humanities.

Key findings:

• Journal article usage varies widely within and across disciplines

• It takes significant time for journals to experience half of the
lifetime downloads (“half-life”) of their articles

• Articles in the majority of journals receive more than half of their
lifetime downloads three or more years after publication

• Only 3% of journals in all fields have half-lives of 12 months or less

• Health sciences articles have the shortest median half-life of the
journals analyzed, but still more than 50% of health science journals
have usage half-lives longer than 24 months

• In fields with the longest usage half-lives, including mathematics
and the humanities, more than 50% of the journals have usage
half-lives longer than 48 months

Full Text of News Release Includes Comment from John Tagler

http://publishers.org/press/124/

Direct to Full Text Report by Phil Davis

http://www.publishers.org/_attachments/docs/journalusagehalflife.pdf

__gary


Gary D. Price, MLIS
Co-Founder and Editor, Library Journal's INFOdocket.com
Co-Founder and Editor, FullTextReports.com
Information Industry Analyst
Librarian
http://INFOdocket.com
http://FullTextReports.com

#end