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