The COUNTER reports which provide us with use statistics for our databases, ejournals and eBooks are changing this year.

Since 2012 we have been receiving COUNTER release 4 reports.   In 2019, a new version, release 5, will replace COUNTER 4.   Release 5 has been developed to meet changing reporting needs and the focus has also been on making things simpler and more consistent.

Fewer reports
COUNTER 4 had twenty-four separate reports, each meeting a different need.  In COUNTER 5 there are four master reports.   The master reports can be filtered and this has eliminated the need for additional reports.

New metric types
There is some different vocabulary in COUNTER 5.  Most notably, there is a new metric type called “item investigations”  and full-text usage (“PDF downloads” and “views”) are now recorded together as a single metric called “item requests.”

One of the reasons for this change is to  better describe the use of new media such as online videos.

More granular
As well as new metric types, COUNTER 5 has some new attributes that can be used for more granular analysis.  For example, there is an attribute called “access_type” which could be used to analyze a hybrid journal and find out how much of the use has been for open access content and how much for restricted articles.

Transition to release 5
At this stage, only two publishers have made COUNTER 5 reports available to us, but during the year more will making the transition from COUNTER 4 to COUNTER 5.

There are some changes to our database and journal subscriptions this year:

Cancelled databases:
Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre (will cease at the end of March)
Economist archive
Informit Families and Society collection
Informit Health collection
Informit New Zealand collection
Māori Land Court minute book index (Knowledge Basket) – we have access to an open access version
National Business Review Online (will cease mid-March)
NZ time series database
Safari
SIRCA

New databases:
IBISWorld
Rock Fracture Knowledgebase
SNL global data

Platform change
MLA international bibliography has moved from ProQuest to Ebsco.

A note about the cancellations:
Some of the databases have been cancelled because of overlap with other resources that we subscribe to.  Some alternative access possibilities also exist – please let LAC know if you have any questions. The Economist, NBR and Safari have been cancelled because of very substantial price increases.  The savings from not renewing  SIRCA and the NZ time series database have made it possible for us to subscribe to IBISWorld and to add global data to the SNL subscription.

Cancelled journal subscriptions:
Cold Spring Harbor symposia on quantitative biology
Fundamental and applied limnology
Journal of cell biology – we continue to have access through PubMed up to 6 months ago
Wood and fiber science

New journal subscriptions
Australian environment review
Case studies in the environment
Event management
Manufacturing & service operations management

Format changes for 2019
Academy of Management journal (e-only)
Academy of Management review (e-only)
Academy of Management perspectives (e-only)
Afterimage (e-only)
Employment today (e-only)
Journal of philosophy (e-only)
Journal of the Warburg & Coutauld Institutes (e-only)
New Zealand journal of ecology (e-only)
Tasmanian reports (e-only)
Taxation today (e-only)
Western Australia reports (e-only)

We are blocked from accessing 2018 articles in Duke University Press journals at present.  Other libraries in Australia and New Zealand are reporting the same problem.

The journals affected are:

American literature
Camera obscura
Philosophical review
TSQ

We have contacted Duke about it.
Peter H

We now have a subscription to the FTTE report (Future trends in technology and education) which Lyndsay has been getting for a few years and recommended to us.
FTTE is a monthly report which surveys recent developments in how education is changing, primarily due to the impact of digital technologies. Each month FTTE aggregates recent developments, checking them against previously-identified trend lines. As certain trends build in support and significance, the report recommends watching them.  FTTE also notes trends which appear to be declining in significance.
Lyndsay describes it as “strategic thinking about the way our sector is going.”
The report is sent by email as a pdf.  We are setting up a distribution list for anyone who is interested in receiving it so if you would like to be added to the list or know of someone (e.g. an academic staff member) who may be interested could you let me know.  The November issue will be available very soon.
Peter H

We have noticed an access problem with our Duke University Press journals.    When we try to open an article pdf we get a login box.

Journals affected are:

American literature
Camera obscura
Philosophical review
Public culture

The publisher has recently moved to another platform and they have been having a few problems with the transition.  We have reported this new access problem to them.

As Tim mentioned on Tuesday in his post review of subscriptions we are trialing NewsBank’s Access World News: research collection.  This is a news collection which includes print and online newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos.    The collection includes 120 New Zealand newspapers.

The database can be accessed here

A list of the titles included is here

The trial runs until Monday 6 August.

The Otago Daily Times and  other Allied Press titles will be added to the collection and NewsBank has also secured agreements to provide image editions of the New Zealand Herald, the Dominion Post, the Press, the Waikato Times and the Otago Daily Times. It is likely these will be available next year.

IRWG recently approved a subscription to the Wakareo ā-ipurangi Māori-English-Māori online lexicon, which is a compilation of a number of separate Māori-English and English-Māori dictionary, lexicon, and word-list resources.

The lexicon is available here

At the moment the search form is slow to load initially (it can take 20 to 30 seconds) but after this it loads more quickly.  We have reported this issue to the publisher.

The 250 units that we purchased at the beginning of this year have  been used up.

The articles in Nature journals that we don’t subscribe to now have this message:

This year in the statistics that we report to CAUL there is a new category  for ejournal use.    This statistic includes the use of gold open access articles.

There is a COUNTER report (JR1 GOA) that we can run to get the gold usage.

We have run reports for our main publishers/providers and they show that gold articles were downloaded 46,657 times by UC users in 2017.

The Counter reports are available here

IRWG recently approved subscriptions for two new JSTOR journal archive collections:

• Ecology & Botany II
• Sustainability

The Ecology & Botany II collection has 86 journals and includes some New Zealand titles such as the New Zealand Journal of Ecology.  A title list is available here 

The Sustainability collection is a new thematic collection of academic and policy research on environmental matters. It consists of 150 journals and 2,200 research reports. A title list is here

The journals are searchable in the Journal A-Z portal now and should be available in Multisearch soon. We will receive catalogue records in mid-April.