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Information for Liaisons

Accessing & Interpretating Usage Statistics (Counter 5 for databases, journals, ebooks, and multimedia)

How to access usage statistics

You can find various usage statistics by visiting the following link:

LibInsight Datasets - https://gcsu.libinsight.com/admin/all

Of most use are probably usage statistics for E-Resources/COUNTER 5 data., organized by year and format.

For any particular year, you can find statistics for the following formats, organized by publisher or platform:

  • Journals
  • Databases
  • Ebooks
  • Media

If you can’t find them in LibInsight email Lamonica.sanford@gcsu.edu with the name of the product or publisher and ask if the statistics can be retrieved.

Interpreting use statistics

Usage statistics can be a helpful tool for making decisions about which resources to subscribe to. However, it is important to be aware of the limitations of usage statistics, especially when comparing different products or categories. 

Here are some factors that can affect usage statistics:

  • The platform on which the resource is available. If a journal is available on multiple platforms, the usage statistics for each platform may be different. This is because the user experience may vary from platform to platform, and some platforms may be more popular than others.
  • The number of years of access. If you have access to 5 years of one journal and 105 years of another, the journal with 105 years of access will likely have higher usage overall, even if the first journal has higher use per article.
  • The number of issues and articles published per year. A journal with more issues and articles published per year will likely have higher usage than a journal with fewer issues and articles.
  • The proportion of articles that are open access. Open access articles are freely available to anyone, so they may have higher usage than subscription-only articles.
  • The importance of the resource to a particular program. Even if a resource has low usage relative to others, it may still be essential for a particular program. For example, a music therapy journal may have low usage overall, but it may be essential for the music therapy program at Georgia College.

When comparing usage statistics, it is important to consider all of these factors. It is also important to remember that usage statistics are just one data point to consider when making decisions about which resources to subscribe to. Other factors, such as the quality of the content, the reputation of the publisher, and the cost of the subscription, should also be considered.

COUNTER terminology

When looking at usage statistics, it can be unclear which data to pay attention to. Also, not all vendors provide COUNTER data. The preferred categories are those that are COUNTER-compliant and have clear definitions. To learn more about COUNTER please view the Friendly Guide to Release for Librarians at https://www.projectcounter.org/friendly-guide-release-5-librarians/.

Journals

The main two types of journal reports are:

  • TR_J1, which is the Title Master Report limited to ejournal metrics and does NOT include open access usage
  • TR_J3, which is the Title Master Report limited to ejournal metrics and also indicates what usage is Open or Controlled (i.e., content behind a paywall)

The two most commonly reported metrics in the TR_J1 are:

  • Unique Item Requests: Only measures interactions with an item once per session. Most similar to the COUNTER 4 "Single Full Text Article Request," or SFTAR. Should be the smaller of the two.
  • Total Item Requests: Counts all interactions with an item per user per session, even if they are duplicated.

Pay attention to Unique Item Requests. (These metrics from the TR_J1 report do not include "requests" of OA articles. They only measure use of the content we pay to access, but there may be times when you want to take this "open" usage into account from the TR_J3 report.)

Databases

The main database report you will see is DB1. The database categories for COUNTER 5 are considerably different from the ones used in COUNTER 4.

The main categories for database reports are:

  • Searches_Regular: The number of searches performed by a user within a database. (similar to the old "Searches" category.)
  • Total Item Investigations: Total number of times a content item or information related to a content item was accessed. (similar to old category "Result clicks.")
  • Unique Item Investigations: Number of unique content Items investigated in a user-session.
  • Total Item Requests: Total number of times a full-text content item is downloaded.
  • Unique Item Requests: Number of unique full-text content items downloaded in a user-session.

Ebooks 

The main report you will see in COUNTER 5 for ebooks is TR B1, which will show two usage metrics. Pay attention to both:

  • Unique_Title_Requests: number of times an ebook was accessed, comparable to print circulation. However many times a given user accessed a title within a given session or how much time they spent with it, the interaction is counted only once. This metric shows how often a title is used.
  • Total_Item_Requests: number of times specific sections/chapters of a book were accessed. If a user clicked on one title and read one chapter, then Total Item Requests would be 1, the same as Unique Title Requests. However, if they clicked on the title and read several chapters, the Total Item Requests could be 5 and the Unique Title Requests would stay 1. This metric shows how intensively a title is used.