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)

 

and

 

"Do Download counts reliably measure journal usage: Trusting the fox to count your hens". (with Alex Wood-Doughty and Doug Steigerwald)

 

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