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Do download reports reliably measure journal usage? Trusting the fox to count your Hens?

Author

Listed:
  • Wood-Doughty, Alex
  • Bergstrom, Ted
  • Steigerwald, Douglas

Abstract

Download rates of academic journals have joined citation rates as commonly used measures of research influence. But in what ways and to what extent do the two measures differ? This paper examines six years of download data for more than five thousand journals subscribed to by the University of California system. While down- load rates of journals are highly correlated with citation rates, the average ratio of downloads to citations varies substantially among academic disciplines. We find that, typically, the ratio of a journal’s downloads to citations depends positively on its im- pact factor. Surprisingly, we find that, controlling for citation rates, number of articles, academic discipline and year of download, there remains a “publisher effect,” with some publishers recording significantly more downloads than would be predicted from char- acteristics of their journals. Download statistics are recorded and supplied to libraries by journal publishers, often subject to confidentiality clauses. If libraries use download statistics to evaluate journals, they may want to account for publisher bias in these statistics.

Suggested Citation

  • Wood-Doughty, Alex & Bergstrom, Ted & Steigerwald, Douglas, 2017. "Do download reports reliably measure journal usage? Trusting the fox to count your Hens?," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt1f221007, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:qt1f221007
    as

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    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/1f221007.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences; journal downloads; citations; impact factor; academic journals;
    All these keywords.

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