What does Elsevier count?
Use Measures for Electronic Resources:
Theory & Practice
ALCTS Program, ALA, Chicago
Daviess Menefee
Director, Library Relations, Americas
Date: June 27, 2005
My Agenda for today
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Part 1: Some history on usage reporting with
ScienceDirect
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Part 2: Present some of the business aspects of
usage from a publisher’s point of view

Part 3: Look at a couple of interesting results on
usage and its reporting from our internal studies
2
Not too long ago….
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ScienceDirect usage reports were:
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Word Documents
Derived by processing logfiles on a PC, over a
single weekend
Provided only the barest of data
Began with 6 insisting customers
Delivered via email by the assigned Account
Manager
Never detailed what was not used.
3
Did we know what we were doing?
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We thought so.
Some internal concern over the potential impact of
usage reports on subscriptions
No standard or benchmarks to follow
Navigating in the dark
Had high hopes to advance the “science” of usage
reporting and analysis. But we didn’t know what
that was.
Usage reporting grew organically from the
demands of the market as well as the business.
4
And then we made some mistakes.
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Usage reporting and transactional
downloads were not fully reconcilable. Two
different systems in play.
Not including 0 usage in the reports caused
a degree of unreliability in the reports.
Trying to define sessions in a session-less
state was not very productive.
5
But then we did some good things.
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Published a white paper indicating that we
were reducing the number of downloads
based on user behavior. (Our sales staff
were not pleased.)
Invested heavily in designing and
implementing a state of the art system that
could provide reports directly to the
customer.
Supported the establishment of Counter.
6
Did we learn anything?
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Yes, about customer reporting. We have
improved as an industry in defining and
delivering them. We have come a long way.
We have created a trusted third party group
to monitor and audit the reports.
We continue to study user behavior and try
to understand it better.
7
Part 2: Why does Elsevier count usage?
Data for business information such as
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Trends
Product Performance
Return On Investment
Need Data for Informed decisions
 Determine Future Directions, ex: Pricing
8
Elsevier Management Reports
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Produced Monthly
Summarize Key Performance Indicators
Indicators: Major Areas
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Content
System
Customers
Other (Links, trials, Web Editions, etc.)
9
Performance Indicators for SD
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Content Indicators
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Number of Journals
Number of Abstracts
Number of full-text articles available
System Performance
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Number of Page Requests
Total Full-text articles downloaded, PDF/HTML
Total Articles incl. SD On Site
Total Searches
10
Performance Indicators, 2
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Customers
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Number of Contracts
Number of Registered Accounts
Number of Active Accounts
Estimated number of user sessions
Number of Active Users (cookie based)
11
More on Performance Indicators
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“Other areas” measured:
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Trial Customers
Guest Usage
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Esp. Article downloads (PPV)
Web Editions (limited to customer base
statistics)
Promotional Usage
Scirus (no. of searches and indexed pages)
Linking Indicators
12
What is the point?
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Company has set target numbers for most
areas of the KPI’s.
Change our thinking from traditional
publishing to how to grow an electronic
journals--books business.
Enables the setting of objectives and
priorities.
Publishing units now have usage goals.
13
Product Management Reports
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Opportunity for product managers to review
and comment on trends or explain why a
number is out of proportion.
Examples:
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Usage of abstracts decreased during the month
but the number of guests users increased.
MathML increased this month over last month
and points to a trend of continuing growth.
14
Data is converted to graphs
ScienceDirect Usage--One Month
Home Page
Other
Journal/Book/MRW
lists
Journal/Book
homepage visits
Subject corners
Gateway entries
Search activity
Journal issues /
TOC pages
Search result lists
Database abstracts
Articles
15
What’s worth counting?
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Just about everything that involves end
users and content.
Full-text Articles are the norm but Elsevier
also continues to monitor browsing behavior
especially from guest users (a possible new
market).
Important to look at changes and how that
effects any usage (training, system
changes, etc.)
16
Part 3: Some Internal Studies
1. Referring URL Study
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Who is sending us the traffic?
What are the subject areas where users
come into the product?
2. Usage on Usage Study
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Are these reports really being used?
Who is using them?
What triggers use?
17
Traffic Referrals to SD
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Major Sites (95%):
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Customers’ OPACs
PubMed
Elsevier Site – Cell Press
Cross Ref
ChemPort
Search Engines (Scirus)
18
Referrals as a Chart
Customer
PubMed
Elsevier
Cross Ref
ChemPort
Search Engines
19
SD Entry by Subject Areas
Economics
Eng ineering
Chemical Eng
Bus iness&Mgmt
Materi als Sci
Chemistry
Dec ision Sci
Ene rgy
Earth Sci
Arts &Humani ties
Phy sics
Computer Sci
Env ironmental Sci
Soc ial Sci
Agricul tural Sci
Mathematics
Medici ne
Biochemis try
Pha rma cology
Immunolog y
Neuros cience
0%
j
20%
Main Home Page
Journal Home Page
External Link
100%
80%
60%
40%
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Some Analysis on Subject Entry
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Life Science end users prefer to come into
ScienceDirect from 3rd party sources,
namely the A&I databases
Humanities and Social Scientists prefer the
Journal Home Page on ScienceDirect
For some areas there appears no
difference: Energy, Chemical Engineering,
Mat Sciences and Engineering.
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2. Usage of Usage Reports
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Internal Elsevier Study of use of
ScienceDirect usage reports
Who uses usage reports?
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Asia/Pacific Librarians lead the list
What triggers use of these reports
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Email Alerts
Asia/Pacific has the most alerts set up
63% customers use the reports when they have
an alert as opposed to 30% without the alert.
22
Effect of Alerts
Percentage of active accounts and
percentage of accounts with alerts
90%
80%
70%
60%
APAC
50%
Americas
40%
EMEA
Total
30%
20%
10%
0%
% of accounts % accounts with % accounts w/o
using the reports alerts using the alerts using the
reports
reports
% accounts with
alerts
23
Popular Usage Reports
Relative popularity over tim e
25.0%
20.0%
15.0%
10.0%
5.0%
0.0%
1a. FTA per 1b. FTA per
entitlement
journal
*COUNTER*
2a. General
overview
4a.
Searches
and
sessions
*COUNTER*
3a. Usage
by file type
2b. Users
and
sessions
3d.
Document
usage stats
3b. Usage
by
entitlement
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Feb-03
Mar-03
Apr-03
May-03
Jun-03
Jul-03
Aug-03
Sep-03
Oct-03
Nov-03
Dec-03
Jan-04
Feb-04
Mar-04
Apr-04
May-04
Jun-04
Jul-04
Aug-04
Sep-04
Oct-04
Nov-04
Dec-04
Jan-05
Number of Reports over time
16.0
1600
14.0
1400
12.0
1200
10.0
1000
8.0
800
6.0
600
4.0
400
2.0
200
0.0
0
reports per id
active ids
25
Usage Reports: did we over build?
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ScienceDirect data may indicate such.
But the data may be useful some day and
probably best to keep it at hand for now.
Are there more functional reports that
should be developed, e.g. factor in cost of
content for performance measure?
26
To really end this presentation
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We still do not know enough about user
behavior and how that affects the numbers.
We do know that the users are disparate
and have different usage patterns in their
respective subjects.
Open question: what are meaningful
numbers and in what context. Answer may
be a local solution.
Publishers don’t have all the answers either.
27
Thank You!
d.menefee@elsevier.com