TDNet Discover

Measurements Playbook - Counter 5 Usage Stats for Librarians: Quarterly Usage Stats

Quarters

Months Calendar Year Fiscal Year
Jan - Mar Q1 FYQ3
Apr - June Q2 FYQ4
July - Sept Q3 FYQ1
Oct - Dec Q4 FYQ2

Counter 5: Definitions of New Metrics

Total Item Requests  

  • Total number of times an article was requested (i.e. fulltext was downloaded or viewed). 
  • Double-click filters are applied to these transactions. 
  • This NEW Counter 5 metric is the equivalent of the old FT Views or FT Requests.

Unique Item Requests

  • Number of unique articles requested in a user-session.
  • This is the new and better way to count for cost-per-use because it eliminates the duplication built into Total Item Requests when someone pulls up the html, and then pulls a pdf of the same article in the same session.  
  • These numbers will likely be lower than Total Item Requests.

Total Item Investigations

  • Total number of times content or info related to a content item was accessed.
  • Includes the following:
    • Viewing an abstract
    • Linking to a link resolver
    • Viewing cited references
    • Linking to an ILL form
    • Viewing html fulltext
    • Viewing the PDF
    • Watching a video
    • Viewing an article preview
  • Total Item Investigations is a good metric for citation databases not known for fulltext, such as Cinahl, since users may interact with it more looking at abstracts, or clicking out to a link resolver to get fulltext elsewhere, or ordering via a built-in ILL form.  
  • Counts the total clicks on the site. 

Key Points

  • Accessing an item as FT counts as both a request AND an investigation (an expression of interest).  

Quarterly Usage Stats - Introduction to The Measurements Playbook

These pages include admin links for various publishers and database vendors to facilitate pulling usage stats for Access Medicine, Clinical Key, Cochrane, Ebsco (Cinahl), Ovid and individual journals like NEJM, JAMA, and Pediatrics.

Where possible, we've added suggestions on the appropriate reports to pull along with notes on how to read / interpret reports, esp. in reference to the new Counter 5 metrics.

We may not be able to list everything people are using here, but it will give you a place to start.   

Pulling Stats

Pulling Stats - Table of Contents

This tabbed box contains step-by-step instructions for pulling quarterly stats for the following resources:

Click the three dots to see additional tabs off to the right.

  • AccessMedicine
  • Annals of Internal Medicine
  • Cochrane via Ovid
  • Cochrane via Wiley
  • Clinical Key
  • Docline
  • EbscoHost Databases - CINAHL
  • EbscoHost Databases - DynaMed
  • EbscoHost - eJournals
  • JAMA
  • NEJM
  • Ovid eJournals
  • Pediatrics
  • ScienceDirect eJournals
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