Are They Any Use? Hazards of Price-Per-Use Comparisons in e-Journal Management

COUNTER-compliant publisher-provided e-journal use statistics are enabling unprecedented ease of computation of journal value metrics like price-per-use. This improved accessibility, however, is likely to increase the prevalence of miscalculation and misinterpretation of value metrics. Specific single-institution and consortium-based examples will illustrate general categories of concern including: price calculation, use definition, and cross-publisher comparison. It is concluded that recent improvements in the COUNTER standard are providing most of the necessary ingredients for meaningful evaluation—what\u27s needed is critical analysis of and consensus as to the best way to apply these figures