Discovery or Displacement? A Large-Scale Longitudinal Study of the Effect of Discovery Systems on Online

Journal Usage

UKSGHarrogate

April 16, 2014

Michael Levine-Clark, University of DenverJohn McDonald, University of Southern California

Jason Price, SCELC Consortium

http://tinyurl.com/pg686r4

Does implementation of a discovery service impact usage of publisher-

hosted journal content?

Publisher-hosted journals are only part of the picture

eBooks, pBooks, aggregator journal content, etc.

publisher journal content

The six publishers in this study

What did we measure?

• Whether there is an effect

• NOT why that effect exists (that’s a future study!)

Data collection• List of libraries with discovery services

>Searched on lib-web-cats

• Surveyed Libraries>Discovery service Implemented>Implementation Date (month/year)>Search box location>Marketing effort

• 149 Libraries Gave Approval>33 libraries selected for this phase>6 for each of the 4 major discovery services and a

group of 9 libraries with no service

Dataset• 33 Libraries

– 28 US, 2 CA, 1 each from UK, AUS, NZ

–WorldCat book holdings>Average: 1,114,193 ; Range: ~300k to ~2.6mil

• Implementation dates (Discovery Libraries): >2010 (3), 2011 (19), 2012 (2)

• 6 Publishers

• 9,206 Journals

• 163,545 Usable Observations

Methodology

Compared COUNTER JR1 total full text article views for the

12 months before vs 12 months after implementation date

June

201

0St

art

Impl

emen

tatio

nM

ay 2

011

May

201

2En

d

Year 1 Year 2

Included implementation month in Year 1 to ensure that both periods included an entire academic year

Observations by Publisher

Journals by Library & Service

5327

3262

5328

6294

4384

Average Usage Change By Discovery & Publisher

Per Journal & Per 10,000 FTE

Examine Data for Outliers

Full Model

Including Discovery Service, Publisher, and Library

Including Discovery Service, Publisher, and Library

Testable Effects

• Discovery Tool– Implemented by multiple libraries– Used to find content from all publishers

• Publisher– Accessible in all discovery tools– Accessible across multiple libraries

• Library– Uses content from multiple publishers– Uses only one discovery tool (so only within DT)

Nested ANOVA Model

[all three factors – preliminary results]

Does usage change vary across libraries?

Institution (sorted by Mean Change)

Does usage change vary across libraries using the same service?

Library 10-15 Library 16-21 Library 22-27 Library 28-33Library 1-9

Does usage change vary across publishers?

Publisher (sorted by Mean Change)

B

AAA A A

Does usage change vary across discovery services?

A

BB

C

D

Publisher

Does the effect of discovery service differ across publishers?

ResultsCan we detect differences between Discovery Services, Publishers, and/or Libraries and/or their interactions? • Library – Yes• Publisher – No• Discovery Service – Yes

• Differential discovery service effect by publisher – Yes

Next Steps• Design & test for effects of:

–Aggregator full text availability–Publisher Size–Journal Subject–Overall usage trends–Configuration options in Discovery services

• Expand pool of libraries• Perhaps explore WHY

Past Presentations• Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship Conference (October 2013)• Charleston Conference (November 2013)• ER&L/Library Journal Webinar (December 2013)• Shangai Jiao Tong Univ / Beijing Univ (Jan 2014)• SCELC Colloquium (March 2014)• ER&L (March 2014)• Presentations posted on slideshare :

–http://visualcv.com/lpq4t1s –http://tinyurl.com/pg686r4

michael.levine-clark@du.edu | johndmcd@usc.edu | jason@scelc.org