Who Knows What, When? Current and Desired Capacities for Online Journal Statistics Gathering and Dissemination

Abstract

As part of the national Synergies project, the Statistics Working Group was formed to investigate statistical reporting mechanisms used by participating institutions, to research online journal-specific reporting needs, and to form a common model for statistical reporting and the sharing of usage data across Canada. The working group informally compared the statistics-gathering range of Open Journal Systems (ojs) and the Érudit Consortium publishing platform; they also surveyed Canadian and international scholarly journal stakeholders to obtain a better understanding of their needs. Respondents were asked about desired types of statistics captured, preferred groupings, preferred harvesting frequency, and their level of satisfaction with available tools. This article describes the results of the platform comparison and the survey, and it provides a set of recommendations intended for the Synergies project but applicable elsewhere.