Measuring the Value of Journals | Periodicals Price Survey 2014

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-04-13

Summary:

"Journal price data is important for budget management processes, but price alone is not the sole factor determining value. Some metrics, like Impact Factor, have become important in assessing value, and similar value metrics will only increase in importance in the future. The implementation of the Counter 4 during 2014 will expand the availability of usage data from journals, databases, ebooks, and multimedia to support better decision-making. Building upon COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) and working with the digital object identifier (DOI) and ORCID (open researcher and contributor ID) identifier, the PIRUS (Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics) Code of Practice is designed to provide usage data at the individual article level, consolidating usage across platforms. Many groups are exploring different sets of data and altmetrics that may be potential descriptors of the impact of journals, especially as the immediacy of Twitter and the social web affect scholarly communication. Indicators of the growing importance of altmetrics include the EBSCO purchase of Plum Analytics and the partnership between HighWire Press and Altmetric LLP. Efforts to create altmetrics are still being developed, but better tools to help assess the import of scholarly works would be welcomed by the community. One effort that will speed development is the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Alternative Assessment Metrics (Altmetrics) Project. The project will study, propose, and develop community-based standards and recommend practices. Clear standards are necessary for altmetrics to move into the mainstream ... The pricing data titles in the merged ISI indexes for 2014 was divided into five price bands; journals priced at less than $410, between $410 and $760, $760–$1,455, $1,455–$2,475, and at more than $2,475. These bands were selected only to be sure that the number of titles in each area is reasonably comparable. The average for Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, and Article Influence Score for all titles in a price range was compared to the averages in the other price bands (Table 4). The Impact Factor and the Eigenfactor tended to show a fairly strong increase with the rise in price. The Article Influence Score did not show a significant increase, with the average for titles in the less than $410 price band showing an average of 1.00 and the most expensive titles showing an average of 1.2.  Higher priced titles do have higher Impact Factors and Eigenfactors, but the increase in the metrics is small when compared to the increase in costs, since the average price ($5,188) for the most expensive journals was 30 times higher than the average price ($158) for the least expensive journals. The increase in prices for the lower cost titles was lower than for the more expensive titles. Article Influence Score did not show a strong correlation between higher scores and prices ..."

Link:

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/04/publishing/measuring-the-value-of-journals-periodicals-price-survey-2014/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.libraries oa.librarians oa.budgets oa.universities oa.colleges oa.impact oa.jif oa.eigenfactor oa.publishers oa.business_models oa.prices oa.altmetrics oa.altmetric.com oa.plum_analytics oa.hei oa.metrics

Date tagged:

04/13/2014, 09:07

Date published:

04/13/2014, 05:07