From: Danny Kingsley <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 17:19:06 +1000
For what it is worth, when I was at Cambridge I ran a project to try an
understand more deeply how the institution was interacting with publishers
- so downloads yes and citations, yes, but also peer review and publication
and editorial work. Plus page and colour charges, APCs and subscription
costs. It was a challenge to get hold of the data in the first place and a
lot of work was required to clean it up to make a meaningful analysis. With
one medium sized publisher we looked at the size of citations and downloads
and the differences were phenomenal - with the number of downloads 200x
higher than the citations.
Looking at the pattern of downloads over several years it was clear they
fitted with the academic year - so it is not unreasonable to assume these
were primarily the result of student use. Of course the same paper might be
downloaded by one student multiple times onto different devices before it
is actually read (if it is indeed read at all). So we know downloads are
not a one to one representation of use.
The point being that we often frame these discussions around the academic
use of research papers, and it is true they are the ones creating
citations. But in a university there is a huge cohort of use by students
which is important to consider. In terms of cancellations, particularly on
a large scale, it is likely in the first year the student use won’t be
greatly affected - the percentage of papers that were published within the
last 12 months put on reading lists for students would be small. But as
years progress and access remains cut off this might start to impact on the
student experience.
Not sure if this is helpful to the project Ted.
Danny
Dr Danny Kingsley
Scholarly Communication Consultant
e: [log in to unmask]
m: +61 (0)480 115 937
t:@dannykay68
o: 0000-0002-3636-5939
On 22 Nov 2019, at 14:29, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Ellen Finnie <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 15:11:11 +0000
Ted, it’s great to see you continuing your journal cost/effectiveness work
– I’ve been looking for updates via your journal pricing site, and am
pleased to hear the important work continues.
I think the cost per citation metric is a good one to include, along with
potentially cost per page, if that is still calculable and meaningful (I
think you had some comparisons of nonprofit pubs v for profit on that
measure on your prior site, if I recall correctly?
I would also flag what Sally said about the unpaywall tool. We’ve been
following the development of that tool closely and with keen interest.
There seems to be considerable overlap in the projects and it could be
good to distinguish/coordinate these significant efforts.
Thanks very much for your work in this arena –
Ellen
____
Ellen Finnie
Co-Interim Associate Director for Collections
Head, Scholarly Communications & Collections Strategy
MIT Libraries
P 617 253 8483
[log in to unmask]
http://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly
From: Ted Bergstrom <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 13:10:17 -0800
Negotiations between Elsevier and the University of California system over
open access and pricing seem to have reached a stalemate, and the UC no
longer has the Elsevier Big Deal. Currently, no UC campus subscribes to
any Elsevier journals. If the UC chooses not to reenter the Big Deal, the
UC campus libraries will probably find it worthwhile to subscribe to some
Elsevier journals. Which ones should they choose?
A UCSB student, Zhiyao Ma, and I are developing a little tool that we hope
will help UC librarians in making cost-effective selections of Elsevier
journals for subscription. The UC has download statistics for each
Elsevier journal at each of its campuses. Elsevier posts *a la carte*
subscription prices for each of its journals. Our tool allows one to
select a cost per download threshold and obtain a list of journals that
meet this criterion, along with their total cost. It also allows for
separate thresholds to be used for different disciplines. You can check
out the current version at https://yaoma.shinyapps.io/Elsevier-Project/
Since this project is still under way, we would be interested in any
suggestions from librarians about how to make this tool more broadly
useful. Extending this tool to make comparisons among journals from
multiple publishers is an obvious step. However, we are dubious about the
value of download statistics for cross-publisher comparisons. There is
evidence that download counts substantially overstate usage, because of
repeated downloads of the same article by the same users, and that the
amount of double-counting varies systematically by publisher. This is
discussed in a couple of papers of which I am a coauthor.
"Looking under the Counter for Overcounted Downloads" (with Kristin
Antelman and Richard Uhrig)
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0vf2k2p0
and
"Do Download counts reliably measure journal usage: Trusting the fox to
count your hens". (with Alex Wood-Doughty and Doug Steigerwald)
https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/17824/19653
Instead of using download data, we could construct a similar calculator
using price per recent citation as a measure of cost-effectiveness. We
have found that the ratio of downloads to citations differ significantly
between disciplines. So it is probably appropriate for cost per citation
thresholds to differ among disciplines.
At any rate, we would value suggestions.
Ted Bergstrom
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