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Electronic journals and users: the CIBER experience in Italy

Electronic journals and users: the CIBER experience in Italy Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Paola Gargiulo Electronic journals an d users: the CI BER experience in Italy Electronic jo urnals and users : the CIBER experience in Ital y CIBER i s a library consortium established in 1999 to share electronic content licensing in the centre and in the south of Italy. Emeroteca Virtuale (EV) is the name of the digital platform used by CIBER to access over 3,300 licensed e-journals. After a brief description of CIBER m ember institutions, of their user population, and of the EV main features, the paper reports on the journal usage statistics of CIBER m embers during 2002 and the first six months of 2003. PAOLA GARGIULO Electronic R esources Co-ordinator, CASPUR Introduction CIBER (Coordinamento Interuniversitario Basi library services and handles the administration of Dati & Editoria in Rete) is the central and southern licences for p articipant insti tutions. Italian library consortium fo unded in 1999 by five Emeroteca Virtuale (EV) is the name of the CASPUR ( Consorzio Interuniversitario A ppli- electronic journals library platform used by CIBER cazioni di Super Calc ola Universita e Ricerca) members. The EV is a CASPUR o perated members . Presently it comprises twenty-five hardware and software site designed to aggregate Italian universities and four affiliated institutions: licensed e-journals from m ultiple p ublishers. The three research centres and the International School EV was launched in September 1999 with 536 for A dvanced Studies (known as SISSA/ISAS). licensed Elsevier titles. It currently gives access to The main aims of CIBER are electronic c ontent all e-journals from si x publishers (American licensing and loading, preservation, promotion Chemical Society (A CS), Blackwell Publishing, and dissemination of sc holarly publishing, and Elsevier Science, Institute of Physics (IoP), Kluwer training. CIBER is a self-funded, voluntary Academic Pu blishers and Nature Group aggregation of ac ademic and research institutions. Publishing) and contains a total of 3,380 titles and Almost a ll universities in Italy negotiate access to over 2,530 ,000 full text articles covering m ainly e-journals and to secondary databases on a scientific, technical and medical (S TM) areas. 2,520 consortial basis. The consortia are regionally titles from El sevier, IoP and Kluwer are available based. CILEA operates in the north and west, CIPE full text through the EV platform. Bi bliographic in the centre and north east, and CIBER in the metadata for B lackwell Publishing (617 titles) and centre and south. Often these three consortia the ACS (30 titles) journals are locally av ailable conduct negotiations together. with links to full text on the publisher’s si te. CASPUR i s an inter-university consortium f or Nature titles are available directly o n publisher’s super computing applications, based in Rome and web site. Contracts will be finalized with Wiley funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, and Springer in the next few months and new Higher Education and Research (MIUR), which negotiations are about to start with other has played a major rol e i n the field of digital publishers and information p roviders library co-operation in Rome and in southern Italy. All disc ontinued titles and their back issues stay CASPUR p rovides CIBER with technical support in the EV. Back-files go back to 1991 (IoP), 1995 for d atabases, and e-journal access and archiving. (Elsevier), and 1996/ 97 (Kluwer). Blackwell It develops tools and solutions to enhance digital Publishing metadata goes back to 1999. IoP and 293 Electronic journals a nd us ers: th e C IBER experience i n Italy Paola Gargiulo Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 ACS w eb archives are accessible through applied sciences areas. The size of the institutions publisher’s web site. The EV has title and subject varies enormously, from t he largest university in search options and traditional search form op tions. Italy – Uni versity of Ro me La Sapienza – w ith 5,000 Other available features include an article aler t teaching and research staff members and over service and links to CrossRef, preprint servers and 50,000 students, to the smallest one – the University CIBER members’ library catalogues. Links have of Cam pus Biomedico – with 90 teaching and also been activated from a locally m ounted research staff and 232 students. Overall, the service installation of Web of Sc ience and from se veral is available to over 2 70,000 students and to about secondary databases (for ex ample, Cambridge 26,000 academics and researchers. Due to the Scientific A bstracts (CSA); Current Contents; Sci- Italian education system the service is mainly used Finder Scholar; E conlit, Medline; MLA, by teaching and research staff and doctoral PsycINFO). Not all CIBER members suscribe to all students; undergraduates are required to read contracts. Institutions also joined CIBER at professors’ lectures notes and assigned reading different times. A l arge majority j oined between materials, and they are not expected to do any 2000 and 2001, only very few institutions joined in original research until graduation. 2002 and just a couple in 2003. Most current contracts are based on the CIBER experience and cross acc ess publisher’s full package. The exceptions are the Nature contract which is based on a more flexi ble Consortia access to journals has been greatly model, and the recently re-negotiated Elsevier advantageous to all institutions, especially to the contract. All co ntracts allow new members to join small- and medium-size ones which could never in later on the agreed conditions. A majo rity o f afford a site licence c ontract by themselves. In the members subscribe to the Elsevier contract - half of first Elsevier contract (1999-2001) only 780 titles them (11 members) opted for t he unique titles list subscribed to by CIBER members were accessible (UTL) and have access to their subscribed titles between 2000 and 2001. From January 2001 to plus a consortial l ist of 70 0 titles selected on the December 2001, 85% of the articles downloaded by basis of the importance of th e journals, impact University of Rome T re (a newly founded factor, and usage statistics. Among t he 11 university with only 8% of the 780 licensed titles universities that opted for the UTL, some (the ones and with almost no back-files) were published in with more pr int s ubscriptions) made this choice journals not subscribed by this institution. More after a careful study of t heir usage statistics. These interestingly 63% of the articles downloaded by libraries made savings and intend to use their the University of Rome L a Sapienza (an old saved funds for new contracts. Other members (the university with the highest number of print ones with fewer print su bscriptions) were obliged subscription titles from El sevier, 65% of the 780 to pay significantly more tha n in previous years, within the consortium) were published in journals because of the Elsevier pricing m odel w hich not held at La Sapienza. eliminated the cross access fee and became very In 2002 CIBER signed a one-year contract with costly for univer sities with few print subscriptions. Elsevier before entering a new negotiation in co- This new contract has been in place for only a few operation with the Italian consortium CIPE for the weeks, therefore all statistical data provided in this years 2003-2005. For the first time all Elsevier article refe rs to a previous situation when all the journals - about 1500 titles (Academic Press and Elsevier journals were accessible by CIBER Harcourt H ealth Science ti tles were not included members. It will b e interesting in a year from no w in this contract) – were accessible full text by all to report on the impact o f the UTL on users and subscribing members. The statistical data collected their information nee ds. showed that the additional titles were not heavily CIBER members include only one private downloaded by CIBER members. This is one of the institution; the universities are mostly multi- reasons why some of the large universities opted disciplinary (23 ) except for the Polytechnic of Bari for the UTL m odel. H owever, one year ’s access to (engineering and architecture) and the University the titles is too shor t a period to evaluate users’ Campus Biomedico of Ro me (a medical schoo l). needs and journals usage. In the next two years we The research centres are in the biomedical and will keep collecting statistic al data and monitoring 294 Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Paola Gargiulo Electronic journals an d users: the CI BER experience in Italy the institutions which have access to the Elsevier well known commercial s tatistical software is used Science jo urnal full package and those that opted to run these operations and to aggregate data. The for the UTL. It will be interesting to see the impact CASPUR s tatisticians working group is of the two models on usage and users’ behaviours. responsible for all these activities. Usage data from publishers, whose licensed content is not locally CIBER and the big d eal loaded, is not included in this report. The data reported i n this paper refer s to EV e-journals usage Starting from 200 1, all new contracts (except for during 2002 and the first six months of 2003 and the ongoing Elsevier contract) have been based on refers mainly to Elsevier and Kluwer titles, as the publisher’s full package. CIBER decided to those two packages are subscribed to by almost all adopt this approach f or the next three to five years institutions. Although CASPUR has collected data while closely monitoring usag e statistics. The since the end of 1999, the EV reached a stable main reasons for em bracing the big deal were: to number of participant m embers at the beginning expose the Italian academic community to a larger of 2002. Therefore data from thi s period is more collection o f scholarly journals; to promote a nd to consistent and comparable. expand the use of e-journals; and to better The number of articles downloaded is understand their need for i nformation. I n Italy, constantly increasing. Between January 2002 and university libraries have traditionally not had June 2003 the EV platform h as been accessed by collection dev elopment policies. Li brarians rarely over 1 9,000 single IP addresses. Access is based on played an active role in the selection procedure. IP authentication; username and password are These activities were, and to some extent are still, used in case of registration for specific services. So considered a task for the academics. Monographs far we have no data on access to the EV by and journals are often selected and purchased by communal wor kstations. Our guess is that the departmental library committees without any real regular EV users connect to the service from thei r effective planning. Until rec ently, there were many personal workstations. duplicate journal subscriptions within the same A web questionnaire survey conducted between university, sometimes within the same faculty. 5 March and 15 April 2003 confirmed tha t 70% of Furthermore, journal holdings data was frequently 1,130 respondents used their personal not held centrally. The digital era and library workstations to access to the EV. The survey also budget constraints brought about change. An showed a general acceptance of e-journals and the urgent need was perceived to rationalize and co- growing preference for the electronic fo rmat in ordinate library serials expenditure, and to co- comparison to the print fo rmat. Over 58% of operate and share resources with other university respondents were either researchers, associate libraries. professors or f ull professors. Almost 78 % of Given this context, access to full e-journal respondents read the EV e-journals at least once a collections was considered a good approach to week. The average daily article downloads in start with. Furthermore, it was decided to monitor February 2003 reached almost 2,500; by March usage regularly and to carry o ut user surveys, web 2003 the daily average had risen to over 4,500. The questionaires and interviews to measure users’ total number of ar ticles downloaded in February attitudes and behaviours toward e-journals every 2003 was over 66,600 compared to February 2002 two to three years. The first sets of analysed data when it was 46,000 (Chart 1). Unsurprisingly, the gave good indications and insights into users’ EV usage is strictly related to the academic year needs and expectations, and will co ntribute to the teaching activities: it reaches its highest peak design of new contract models. in winter and early spring, and then goes down to remarkably low use in August. It slowly returns Usage statistics to its normal l evel between September and November and then decreases again in December. The EV platform web log fi les are processed During the period J uly 2002-June 2003 the through scripts that allow data cleaning, number of El sevier and Kluwer titles downloaded eliminating dirty data (e.g. double, triple cl icks) by each institution compared to their print titl es and other inconsistent users’ behaviours data. A was quite amazing. Virtually all titles in the 295 Electronic journals a nd us ers: th e C IBER experience i n Italy Paola Gargiulo Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Chart 1 2500 2500 2000 2000 1500 1500 1000 1000 500 500 0 0 Chart 2 Chart 3 a (Università di ) Aquil i) ari ( Politecnico d di) Bari (Università niversità della ) Basilicata ( U ersità della ) Calabria ( Univ di ) erino ( Università Cam di ssino ( Università ) Ca zio) ità Gabriele D Annun Chieti (Univers tica - CNR - Napol Ciberne January re Sanità Istituto Superio February niversità di ) Lecce ( U n versità di ) Messina ( U i March di ) lermo (Università Pa April a henope (Napoli) P rt May a ( Università di ) Perugi a) niversità di Tor Vergat Roma ( U June i o) oma (Campus Biomed c July La apienza) oma (Università S ust Aug à di Roma Tre) Roma (Universit i ) no ( Università d Saler tember Sep Trieste ( SISSA ) October à della ) Tuscia ( Universit vember della ) No Tuscia ( Università ber Decem anuary February March April May Jun Titles Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Paola Gargiulo Electronic journals an d users: the CI BER experience in Italy Chart 4 e-collections wer e downloaded by the University web site in the case of incomplete is sues or to look of Rome La Sapienza (2078 out of 2520 titles). On up other services offered on the publishers’ web average the institutions held about 150 print t itles; site. In future, Kluwer and IoP usage data will b e with access to the e-journal services they included in our analysis and we look fo rward to downloaded slightly over 1,1 50 titles each. This having better statistical data from pub lishers, that data might reflect a lack of a good serials it is hoped will b e COUNTER-compliant. acquisition policy on the part of the libraries, but The EV is a ‘2 4x7’ service. As Chart 4 shows, EV above all it indicates that users take serious users read and download journals during office advantage of high quality e-journals, at least in the hours between 9 am and 7 pm, w ith a peak time first years of access (Chart 2). between 11 am and 12 pm (26 %). Many professors The Elsevier titles were by far the most and researchers have remote access to the EV from downloaded titles during the period January 2002- their homes through the university network via a June 2003. Articles downlo ads from Elsevier were modem. Mo st CIBER universities do not use secure 850,890 compared to 66,622 for Kl uwer (Chart 3). proxy s ervers, therefore they do not allow users to The chart shows an increase in dowloading for a ll access the EV through private internet providers. publishers. However, it should be noted that users Having said that, the majority of res earchers and have dual access to Kluwer and IoP e-journals – professors in the STM areas tend to go to their both through the EV platform and the publisher’s offices or l aboratories every day, whereas web site, whereas they have only one access to professors and researchers in the humanities and Elsevier journals: the EV. Usage data provided by social sciences tend to work at home or in libraries. Kluwer and IoP was not added to EV datasets, as It seems that scientists do not use the EV at home our study was limited to the EV platform. because they do not need to do so, although some Therefore, the Kluwer and IoP usage data is actual of them would appreciate having better higher than the number reported in Chart 3. Users connectivity from their homes. Social scientis ts and tend to use the EV platform r ather than the humanists differ in their behaviour. Generally publishers’ web site, as they take advantage of speaking they are less enthusiastic about searching articles from dif ferent publishers using e-journals, although they would use e-resources the same interface and often using federated more if a secure and fast access was available from searches. Users generally connect to the publishers’ home. Scientists would appreciate secure remote 297 Electronic journals a nd us ers: th e C IBER experience i n Italy Paola Gargiulo Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 access when they are abroad and therefore cannot statistics showing downloads from p ublishers’ use the EV service. Remote access has not been web sites are improved and become comparable to perceived as a strong need so far, but it will be the EV data, they will b e used in future reports. addressed in the near future when more journals in Usage monitoring, together with studies on the the humanities and social sci ences are available EV users’ behaviours, including attitudes towards through the EV platform. e-journals and e-content resources in general and Our web questionnaire confirmed the results of how users search, browse, read and communicate the web log analysis. Scientists increasingly in the different subject areas, will help CIBER connect to the EV from their offices and personal make better decisions on electronic ac cess workstations and use the physical library less and licensing and better serve its academic and less, especially scholars from the biomedical areas. research community. We are only just at the beginning of the process Conclusions of collecting a nd analysing different types of datasets; this report i s the first step. CIBER statistical data confirms that e-journals usage is constantly increasing and if new journal References titles from other publishers are made available 1. CIBER web sit e: through the EV platform, the use of e-journals will http:// ciber.caspur.it increase more. The big deal approach defi nitively 2. CASPUR w eb sit e: seems to be a right choice to make at an early http:// www.caspur .it stage. In the case of CIBER it attracted more universities and more us ers to the EV. The new 3. Conti, C., Contino, U ., Farinelli G., Gargiulo, P., and Elsevier contract will giv e CIBER the opportunity Marquardt, L., Digital libraries and users: an Italian to study the effect of the UTL m odel i n 11 experience. Changes in academic users’ a ttitudes, universities and to monitor the big deal approach perceptions and the usage of study and research tools in in the other 11 institutions. a hybrid context. Paper presented at the 2003 There are still a lot of users and there is potential Conference on Users in the E lectronic Information still some cultural resistance to e-journals Environments, organized by the University L ibrary especially among humanities and social sc iences of Finland, E spoo, 8-9 September, 2003. scholars. More outreach and marketing activities http:// www.lib.helsinki.fi/f inelib/d igilib/ need to be carried o ut by CIBER librarians in order to promote and disseminate use of l icensed and open-access journals. More social sci ences and Paola Gargiulo humanities journals need to be included, possibly Electronic R esources Co-ordinator in languages other than English, preferably in Library Automation Office Italian. CASPUR More in-depth studies will be conducted in the Via dei Tizii 6, b 00815 Ro me, Italy future when more data covering a longer period o f E-mail: p [email protected] time will be available. Furthermore, when usage http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Serials The Journal for the Serials Community Unpaywall

Electronic journals and users: the CIBER experience in Italy

Gargiulo, Paola
Serials The Journal for the Serials Community – Nov 1, 2003
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Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Paola Gargiulo Electronic journals an d users: the CI BER experience in Italy Electronic jo urnals and users : the CIBER experience in Ital y CIBER i s a library consortium established in 1999 to share electronic content licensing in the centre and in the south of Italy. Emeroteca Virtuale (EV) is the name of the digital platform used by CIBER to access over 3,300 licensed e-journals. After a brief description of CIBER m ember institutions, of their user population, and of the EV main features, the paper reports on the journal usage statistics of CIBER m embers during 2002 and the first six months of 2003. PAOLA GARGIULO Electronic R esources Co-ordinator, CASPUR Introduction CIBER (Coordinamento Interuniversitario Basi library services and handles the administration of Dati & Editoria in Rete) is the central and southern licences for p articipant insti tutions. Italian library consortium fo unded in 1999 by five Emeroteca Virtuale (EV) is the name of the CASPUR ( Consorzio Interuniversitario A ppli- electronic journals library platform used by CIBER cazioni di Super Calc ola Universita e Ricerca) members. The EV is a CASPUR o perated members . Presently it comprises twenty-five hardware and software site designed to aggregate Italian universities and four affiliated institutions: licensed e-journals from m ultiple p ublishers. The three research centres and the International School EV was launched in September 1999 with 536 for A dvanced Studies (known as SISSA/ISAS). licensed Elsevier titles. It currently gives access to The main aims of CIBER are electronic c ontent all e-journals from si x publishers (American licensing and loading, preservation, promotion Chemical Society (A CS), Blackwell Publishing, and dissemination of sc holarly publishing, and Elsevier Science, Institute of Physics (IoP), Kluwer training. CIBER is a self-funded, voluntary Academic Pu blishers and Nature Group aggregation of ac ademic and research institutions. Publishing) and contains a total of 3,380 titles and Almost a ll universities in Italy negotiate access to over 2,530 ,000 full text articles covering m ainly e-journals and to secondary databases on a scientific, technical and medical (S TM) areas. 2,520 consortial basis. The consortia are regionally titles from El sevier, IoP and Kluwer are available based. CILEA operates in the north and west, CIPE full text through the EV platform. Bi bliographic in the centre and north east, and CIBER in the metadata for B lackwell Publishing (617 titles) and centre and south. Often these three consortia the ACS (30 titles) journals are locally av ailable conduct negotiations together. with links to full text on the publisher’s si te. CASPUR i s an inter-university consortium f or Nature titles are available directly o n publisher’s super computing applications, based in Rome and web site. Contracts will be finalized with Wiley funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, and Springer in the next few months and new Higher Education and Research (MIUR), which negotiations are about to start with other has played a major rol e i n the field of digital publishers and information p roviders library co-operation in Rome and in southern Italy. All disc ontinued titles and their back issues stay CASPUR p rovides CIBER with technical support in the EV. Back-files go back to 1991 (IoP), 1995 for d atabases, and e-journal access and archiving. (Elsevier), and 1996/ 97 (Kluwer). Blackwell It develops tools and solutions to enhance digital Publishing metadata goes back to 1999. IoP and 293 Electronic journals a nd us ers: th e C IBER experience i n Italy Paola Gargiulo Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 ACS w eb archives are accessible through applied sciences areas. The size of the institutions publisher’s web site. The EV has title and subject varies enormously, from t he largest university in search options and traditional search form op tions. Italy – Uni versity of Ro me La Sapienza – w ith 5,000 Other available features include an article aler t teaching and research staff members and over service and links to CrossRef, preprint servers and 50,000 students, to the smallest one – the University CIBER members’ library catalogues. Links have of Cam pus Biomedico – with 90 teaching and also been activated from a locally m ounted research staff and 232 students. Overall, the service installation of Web of Sc ience and from se veral is available to over 2 70,000 students and to about secondary databases (for ex ample, Cambridge 26,000 academics and researchers. Due to the Scientific A bstracts (CSA); Current Contents; Sci- Italian education system the service is mainly used Finder Scholar; E conlit, Medline; MLA, by teaching and research staff and doctoral PsycINFO). Not all CIBER members suscribe to all students; undergraduates are required to read contracts. Institutions also joined CIBER at professors’ lectures notes and assigned reading different times. A l arge majority j oined between materials, and they are not expected to do any 2000 and 2001, only very few institutions joined in original research until graduation. 2002 and just a couple in 2003. Most current contracts are based on the CIBER experience and cross acc ess publisher’s full package. The exceptions are the Nature contract which is based on a more flexi ble Consortia access to journals has been greatly model, and the recently re-negotiated Elsevier advantageous to all institutions, especially to the contract. All co ntracts allow new members to join small- and medium-size ones which could never in later on the agreed conditions. A majo rity o f afford a site licence c ontract by themselves. In the members subscribe to the Elsevier contract - half of first Elsevier contract (1999-2001) only 780 titles them (11 members) opted for t he unique titles list subscribed to by CIBER members were accessible (UTL) and have access to their subscribed titles between 2000 and 2001. From January 2001 to plus a consortial l ist of 70 0 titles selected on the December 2001, 85% of the articles downloaded by basis of the importance of th e journals, impact University of Rome T re (a newly founded factor, and usage statistics. Among t he 11 university with only 8% of the 780 licensed titles universities that opted for the UTL, some (the ones and with almost no back-files) were published in with more pr int s ubscriptions) made this choice journals not subscribed by this institution. More after a careful study of t heir usage statistics. These interestingly 63% of the articles downloaded by libraries made savings and intend to use their the University of Rome L a Sapienza (an old saved funds for new contracts. Other members (the university with the highest number of print ones with fewer print su bscriptions) were obliged subscription titles from El sevier, 65% of the 780 to pay significantly more tha n in previous years, within the consortium) were published in journals because of the Elsevier pricing m odel w hich not held at La Sapienza. eliminated the cross access fee and became very In 2002 CIBER signed a one-year contract with costly for univer sities with few print subscriptions. Elsevier before entering a new negotiation in co- This new contract has been in place for only a few operation with the Italian consortium CIPE for the weeks, therefore all statistical data provided in this years 2003-2005. For the first time all Elsevier article refe rs to a previous situation when all the journals - about 1500 titles (Academic Press and Elsevier journals were accessible by CIBER Harcourt H ealth Science ti tles were not included members. It will b e interesting in a year from no w in this contract) – were accessible full text by all to report on the impact o f the UTL on users and subscribing members. The statistical data collected their information nee ds. showed that the additional titles were not heavily CIBER members include only one private downloaded by CIBER members. This is one of the institution; the universities are mostly multi- reasons why some of the large universities opted disciplinary (23 ) except for the Polytechnic of Bari for the UTL m odel. H owever, one year ’s access to (engineering and architecture) and the University the titles is too shor t a period to evaluate users’ Campus Biomedico of Ro me (a medical schoo l). needs and journals usage. In the next two years we The research centres are in the biomedical and will keep collecting statistic al data and monitoring 294 Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Paola Gargiulo Electronic journals an d users: the CI BER experience in Italy the institutions which have access to the Elsevier well known commercial s tatistical software is used Science jo urnal full package and those that opted to run these operations and to aggregate data. The for the UTL. It will be interesting to see the impact CASPUR s tatisticians working group is of the two models on usage and users’ behaviours. responsible for all these activities. Usage data from publishers, whose licensed content is not locally CIBER and the big d eal loaded, is not included in this report. The data reported i n this paper refer s to EV e-journals usage Starting from 200 1, all new contracts (except for during 2002 and the first six months of 2003 and the ongoing Elsevier contract) have been based on refers mainly to Elsevier and Kluwer titles, as the publisher’s full package. CIBER decided to those two packages are subscribed to by almost all adopt this approach f or the next three to five years institutions. Although CASPUR has collected data while closely monitoring usag e statistics. The since the end of 1999, the EV reached a stable main reasons for em bracing the big deal were: to number of participant m embers at the beginning expose the Italian academic community to a larger of 2002. Therefore data from thi s period is more collection o f scholarly journals; to promote a nd to consistent and comparable. expand the use of e-journals; and to better The number of articles downloaded is understand their need for i nformation. I n Italy, constantly increasing. Between January 2002 and university libraries have traditionally not had June 2003 the EV platform h as been accessed by collection dev elopment policies. Li brarians rarely over 1 9,000 single IP addresses. Access is based on played an active role in the selection procedure. IP authentication; username and password are These activities were, and to some extent are still, used in case of registration for specific services. So considered a task for the academics. Monographs far we have no data on access to the EV by and journals are often selected and purchased by communal wor kstations. Our guess is that the departmental library committees without any real regular EV users connect to the service from thei r effective planning. Until rec ently, there were many personal workstations. duplicate journal subscriptions within the same A web questionnaire survey conducted between university, sometimes within the same faculty. 5 March and 15 April 2003 confirmed tha t 70% of Furthermore, journal holdings data was frequently 1,130 respondents used their personal not held centrally. The digital era and library workstations to access to the EV. The survey also budget constraints brought about change. An showed a general acceptance of e-journals and the urgent need was perceived to rationalize and co- growing preference for the electronic fo rmat in ordinate library serials expenditure, and to co- comparison to the print fo rmat. Over 58% of operate and share resources with other university respondents were either researchers, associate libraries. professors or f ull professors. Almost 78 % of Given this context, access to full e-journal respondents read the EV e-journals at least once a collections was considered a good approach to week. The average daily article downloads in start with. Furthermore, it was decided to monitor February 2003 reached almost 2,500; by March usage regularly and to carry o ut user surveys, web 2003 the daily average had risen to over 4,500. The questionaires and interviews to measure users’ total number of ar ticles downloaded in February attitudes and behaviours toward e-journals every 2003 was over 66,600 compared to February 2002 two to three years. The first sets of analysed data when it was 46,000 (Chart 1). Unsurprisingly, the gave good indications and insights into users’ EV usage is strictly related to the academic year needs and expectations, and will co ntribute to the teaching activities: it reaches its highest peak design of new contract models. in winter and early spring, and then goes down to remarkably low use in August. It slowly returns Usage statistics to its normal l evel between September and November and then decreases again in December. The EV platform web log fi les are processed During the period J uly 2002-June 2003 the through scripts that allow data cleaning, number of El sevier and Kluwer titles downloaded eliminating dirty data (e.g. double, triple cl icks) by each institution compared to their print titl es and other inconsistent users’ behaviours data. A was quite amazing. Virtually all titles in the 295 Electronic journals a nd us ers: th e C IBER experience i n Italy Paola Gargiulo Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Chart 1 2500 2500 2000 2000 1500 1500 1000 1000 500 500 0 0 Chart 2 Chart 3 a (Università di ) Aquil i) ari ( Politecnico d di) Bari (Università niversità della ) Basilicata ( U ersità della ) Calabria ( Univ di ) erino ( Università Cam di ssino ( Università ) Ca zio) ità Gabriele D Annun Chieti (Univers tica - CNR - Napol Ciberne January re Sanità Istituto Superio February niversità di ) Lecce ( U n versità di ) Messina ( U i March di ) lermo (Università Pa April a henope (Napoli) P rt May a ( Università di ) Perugi a) niversità di Tor Vergat Roma ( U June i o) oma (Campus Biomed c July La apienza) oma (Università S ust Aug à di Roma Tre) Roma (Universit i ) no ( Università d Saler tember Sep Trieste ( SISSA ) October à della ) Tuscia ( Universit vember della ) No Tuscia ( Università ber Decem anuary February March April May Jun Titles Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 Paola Gargiulo Electronic journals an d users: the CI BER experience in Italy Chart 4 e-collections wer e downloaded by the University web site in the case of incomplete is sues or to look of Rome La Sapienza (2078 out of 2520 titles). On up other services offered on the publishers’ web average the institutions held about 150 print t itles; site. In future, Kluwer and IoP usage data will b e with access to the e-journal services they included in our analysis and we look fo rward to downloaded slightly over 1,1 50 titles each. This having better statistical data from pub lishers, that data might reflect a lack of a good serials it is hoped will b e COUNTER-compliant. acquisition policy on the part of the libraries, but The EV is a ‘2 4x7’ service. As Chart 4 shows, EV above all it indicates that users take serious users read and download journals during office advantage of high quality e-journals, at least in the hours between 9 am and 7 pm, w ith a peak time first years of access (Chart 2). between 11 am and 12 pm (26 %). Many professors The Elsevier titles were by far the most and researchers have remote access to the EV from downloaded titles during the period January 2002- their homes through the university network via a June 2003. Articles downlo ads from Elsevier were modem. Mo st CIBER universities do not use secure 850,890 compared to 66,622 for Kl uwer (Chart 3). proxy s ervers, therefore they do not allow users to The chart shows an increase in dowloading for a ll access the EV through private internet providers. publishers. However, it should be noted that users Having said that, the majority of res earchers and have dual access to Kluwer and IoP e-journals – professors in the STM areas tend to go to their both through the EV platform and the publisher’s offices or l aboratories every day, whereas web site, whereas they have only one access to professors and researchers in the humanities and Elsevier journals: the EV. Usage data provided by social sciences tend to work at home or in libraries. Kluwer and IoP was not added to EV datasets, as It seems that scientists do not use the EV at home our study was limited to the EV platform. because they do not need to do so, although some Therefore, the Kluwer and IoP usage data is actual of them would appreciate having better higher than the number reported in Chart 3. Users connectivity from their homes. Social scientis ts and tend to use the EV platform r ather than the humanists differ in their behaviour. Generally publishers’ web site, as they take advantage of speaking they are less enthusiastic about searching articles from dif ferent publishers using e-journals, although they would use e-resources the same interface and often using federated more if a secure and fast access was available from searches. Users generally connect to the publishers’ home. Scientists would appreciate secure remote 297 Electronic journals a nd us ers: th e C IBER experience i n Italy Paola Gargiulo Serials – V ol .16, n o.3, No vember 2003 access when they are abroad and therefore cannot statistics showing downloads from p ublishers’ use the EV service. Remote access has not been web sites are improved and become comparable to perceived as a strong need so far, but it will be the EV data, they will b e used in future reports. addressed in the near future when more journals in Usage monitoring, together with studies on the the humanities and social sci ences are available EV users’ behaviours, including attitudes towards through the EV platform. e-journals and e-content resources in general and Our web questionnaire confirmed the results of how users search, browse, read and communicate the web log analysis. Scientists increasingly in the different subject areas, will help CIBER connect to the EV from their offices and personal make better decisions on electronic ac cess workstations and use the physical library less and licensing and better serve its academic and less, especially scholars from the biomedical areas. research community. We are only just at the beginning of the process Conclusions of collecting a nd analysing different types of datasets; this report i s the first step. CIBER statistical data confirms that e-journals usage is constantly increasing and if new journal References titles from other publishers are made available 1. CIBER web sit e: through the EV platform, the use of e-journals will http:// ciber.caspur.it increase more. The big deal approach defi nitively 2. CASPUR w eb sit e: seems to be a right choice to make at an early http:// www.caspur .it stage. In the case of CIBER it attracted more universities and more us ers to the EV. The new 3. Conti, C., Contino, U ., Farinelli G., Gargiulo, P., and Elsevier contract will giv e CIBER the opportunity Marquardt, L., Digital libraries and users: an Italian to study the effect of the UTL m odel i n 11 experience. Changes in academic users’ a ttitudes, universities and to monitor the big deal approach perceptions and the usage of study and research tools in in the other 11 institutions. a hybrid context. Paper presented at the 2003 There are still a lot of users and there is potential Conference on Users in the E lectronic Information still some cultural resistance to e-journals Environments, organized by the University L ibrary especially among humanities and social sc iences of Finland, E spoo, 8-9 September, 2003. scholars. More outreach and marketing activities http:// www.lib.helsinki.fi/f inelib/d igilib/ need to be carried o ut by CIBER librarians in order to promote and disseminate use of l icensed and open-access journals. More social sci ences and Paola Gargiulo humanities journals need to be included, possibly Electronic R esources Co-ordinator in languages other than English, preferably in Library Automation Office Italian. CASPUR More in-depth studies will be conducted in the Via dei Tizii 6, b 00815 Ro me, Italy future when more data covering a longer period o f E-mail: p [email protected] time will be available. Furthermore, when usage

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Published: Nov 1, 2003

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