The Secret Life of Articles: From Download Metrics to Downstream Impact

Abstract

Traditional citation and download metrics have long been the standard by which we measure the use and value of scholarly articles. However, these methods neglect the usage and real-world impact of newer technologies to access, store, and share downloaded scholarly articles. This session's speakers will share the results of interviews, focus groups, and an international survey with 1,000 scholars to investigate the ways in which they now access, store, share, and use downloaded scholarly articles. By identifying and measuring what traditional metrics fail to examine, the Beyond Downloads project attempts to capture a more complete picture of the use and value of scholarly articles, which is critical for librarians, publishers, and vendors to understand in developing scholarly tools and services. Complete usage can no longer be measured by traditional means alone. The speakers will discuss the findings of their research and the implications for metrics that take into account scholars' changing access, reading, and sharing behaviors.

No scholar is an island: The impact of sharing in the work life of scholars

“…By focusing only on download counts, publishers and libraries risk underestimating the value of their products and collections, particularly repeat and shared usage. A forthcoming article based on a presentation at the Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries Conference will examine the issues surrounding the development of a secondary usage calculator (Tenopir, Christian, Anderson, Estelle, Allard, & Nicholas, ).…”

“…Of course, download counts assume that when a researcher downloads an article, he/she alone read it (Tenopir et al ., , ). Although citation counts show more engagement with the material, sharing behaviour reflects the larger role of the article within a community (personal or public) (Gruzd, Staves, & Wilk, ; Wouters & Costas, ).…”