Patterns and costs of printed and online journal usage

This study in an academic medical sciences library setting examines the correlation of usage of a matched set of print and online titles, the validity of e-journals usage statistics and the impact of online journals on print journal usage. The print and online usage was determined for 270 journals, both versions of which were available. Print usage was determined annually since 1997 using the reshelving and the error-copies method. Online usage statistics were delivered by five publishers and corrected for redundant multiple accesses. Print journal usage decreased by 22.3 and 30.2% respectively over each of 2 years after the introduction of online journals. Journals published both in print and online lost 30.4% of their print usage within 2 years. The total loss of usage of print-only titles in the same period was somewhat higher, at 45.8%. The average correlation between online and print usage is 0.60 and 0.67 respectively. For the examined titles, users accessed the online versions ten times as often as the print version. Two clearly distinguishable groupings emerged: while with Academic Press and Elsevier, e-journal usage exceeded print usage by a factor of 3 or 4, the e-journals of Blackwell, HighWire and Springer were used on average 14.6 times as frequently as the corresponding print journals. Each usage of a print article cost 2.79-50.82 Euro, each usage of an online article 0.31-15.10 Euro, depending on the publisher. On average, the usage of an online article was 5.4 times cheaper. Within 2-3 years the usage of online journals has outstripped that of print titles by a factor of ten, but the specific spectrum of usage remains much the same as when only print journals alone existed. Print titles not available online suffer a greater decline in usage compared with print/online journals. This confirms that what is read or purchased is determined primarily by ease of access and that there is a steady tendency to reduce the multiplicity of access modes to a manageable few. The availability of journals online seems to have created a new clientele, at least in the case of the German-language Springer journals. The connection between supplier and supply is much less clear with e-journals than it is with print titles. Therefore it is very important to stress and encourage the role of the library as the supplier of this sort of information in the university environment. Collection building issues are discussed in the light of the results.