Sent: 01 October 2006 13:30
Usage Factor study progress announcement
**Listserv mailing**
Usage-based measurements of journal quality – wide-ranging study gets under way’
Earlier this year, the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG), in association with the online usage metrics organisation COUNTER, announced its intention to fund a study which would explore how online journal usage statistics might form the basis of a new metric of journal quality. An invitation to tender for the project was issued in April.
After assessment of submissions, it was decided to divide the project into two separate components. Accordingly in September 2006 Key Perspectives Ltd was commissioned to mount a web based survey of opinion, while consultant and COUNTER Director Peter Shepherd was commissioned to carry out a series of in-depth interviews with stakeholders from the author, publisher, and librarian communities. The aim of these twin avenues of research is to examine the ways in which journal quality is currently assessed, the degree to which any additional usage-based metrics might prove valuable to each stakeholder community, along with practical ways in which such metrics might be derived and constructed to provide the maximum utility for all, within defined resource constraints .
It is intended that the interviews will be conducted between October and December 2006 and that the results of the interviews will be used to finalise the form of the web-based survey, which will be made available in February 2007. A report of the findings of both strands of the research will be presented in a briefing session at the UKSG Annual Conference 16-18 April 2007 and subsequently published as an article in Serials.
For more information on this study contact:-
Paul Harwood
Chair, UKSG
Tel: +44 (0) 1993 880044
Richard Gedye
Chair, COUNTER
Tel: +44-(0)1865-353785
Or email:
Alison Whitehorn
Business Manager, UKSG
alison@uksg.org