From: Michael Mabe <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 08:52:18 +0000

Thanks to Bill for quoting our latest version of the STM Report 2015:

www.stm-assoc.org/2015_02_20_STM_Report_2015.pdf

Mark Ware and I took soundings on download statistics and it would be
fair to say that the 2.5 billion figure is probably an underestimate,
not least because it cannot take into account downloads of versions of
articles held around the web. The quoted figure was an estimate from
publisher gross download data on their platforms of VoRs.

Best


Michael A. Mabe
Chief Executive Officer
International Association of STM Publishers
Prins Willem Alexanderhof 5           Prama House, 267 Banbury Road
Den Haag, 2595BE, NL                         Oxford, OX2 7HT, UK
Web: www.stm-assoc.org


-----Original Message-----

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