APPENDIX 141
Supplementary evidence from Reed Elsevier
COMPARING JOURNALS BY SUBJECT AREA, IMPACT
FACTOR AND USAGE OF FULL TEXT ARTICLES (2001-2003)
In March 2004 Elsevier was questioned before
the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee on the
topic of Scientific Publications.
The Committee has asked for additional information
re. the increase of usage of full text articles of Elsevier's
journal collection. The Committee showed special interest in the
growth of journal usage and wanted to better understand whether
there was a relationship between usage levels and the impact factor
of journals.
Below you will find the analysis to answer the
above question. The analysis includes a (representative) sample
of 28 Elsevier journals. These journals are subsequently divided
into 7 subject areas of 4 journals each, of which 2 have a relatively
High Impact Factor and 2 a relatively Low Impact Factor. (ie Impact
Factors are based on the 2002 listings provided and published
by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI). Review journals
(Trends, Current Opinion, Advances in..) are excluded from the
analysis as these are normally highly used and show up in top
most cited journals. So the analysis only includes comparable
journals.
First, usage-growth differs
somewhat between subject areas: Cell Biology, General Medicine
and Nuclear Physics show the highest usage increase, while the
other 4 areas are on average somewhat lower.
Second, when looking at the usage-increase
2001 to 2003 by journal, it stands out, that almost all journals
are in between an interval of + 150% and + 450% growth of full
text article usage.
Third, it is clear that the usage increase
of low Impact Factor journals is very close to the growth of high
Impact Factor journals. In quite a number of cases low impact
journals grow even faster than high impact journals.
Finally, one could claim that the wider the
audience that has access to journals the more these journals are
used and irrespective of the citation levels they receive.
June 2004
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