Interesting discussion. For those suffering a dip in usage I'm wondering if it's the effect of resources such Research Gate & Mendeley? Academics & students can store papers & share them within these resources. If this is a possible cause, then do academics & students need to understand that they may be jeopardising institutional subscriptions to particular journal titles by storing/sharing in this way? That is, if article PDFs are stored/shared in Mendeley their use won't be reflected in JR1 reports (I think I'm right in stating this?). And it's the JR1 report which we librarians base our cancellation decisions on.
Mendeley feeds usage data into altmerics but I doubt m/any HE library's use altmetrics to evaluate the use of their collections on an annual basis. I'd think the majority would use the JR1 report and/or JUSP.
On the subject of Research Gate & Mendeley, does anyone know how these tools get around potential illegal storage of article PDFs (published versions)? Mendeley, for example, have information on what their users can and cannot do in terms of storing/sharing (https://www.mendeley.com/copyright/), but it appears to be an honour-based system. If we stored article PDFs (published versions) in our VLE (e.g. Moodle) without recording them for the CLA, for example, we'd be in breach of CLA copyright regulations.
thanks,
Lawrence
Lawrence Jones
Content & Digital Infrastructure Manager
Library
St George's, University of London
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