Full-text retrievals and EBSCO Discovery Service: Assessing usage of e-journals across multiple platforms

• Published in: Journal of electronic resources librarianship Vol. 34; no. 2; pp. 89 - 107
• Main Author: Robins, Simon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Routledge 24.06.2022; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Academic Libraries; Colleges & universities; data visualization; Desktop Publishing; Discovery layers; EBSCO Discovery Service; Electronic Journals; Electronic Libraries; Electronic Publishing; Higher Education; Information Retrieval; Libraries; Oxford University Press; Platforms; publisher platforms; SAGE; Search Strategies; Springer; Taylor and Francis; usage data; Users (Information); Wiley; Ohio; United States > US; Dayton Ohio
• ISSN: 1941-126X; 1941-1278
• DOI: 10.1080/1941126X.2022.2064105

This study utilizes COUNTER 5 data from the University of Dayton (UD) to measure full-text retrievals of e-journal articles from five major academic journal publishers (Taylor & Francis, SAGE, Oxford, Wiley, and Springer). Usage data from these publishers' e-journals within EBSCO is compared to the same content when accessed from publisher platforms such as Wiley Online Library or SpringerLINK. Building on previous studies that have largely focused on links (or referrals) from the library discovery layer to publisher platforms, this study analyzes usage of full text-articles stored within EBSCO Discovery Service and EBSCOhost subject databases to consider how these full-text holdings within EBSCO might affect referrals to publisher platforms. The findings indicate that full-text article holdings within EBSCO are used more often than the same content in publisher platforms, suggesting that UD students and researchers rely heavily on-and likely often start with-EBSCO for their learning and research.