Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on e-resource usage trends

During 2020 many publishers and suppliers opened up or removed restrictions on e-resource content to support coronavirus research and the sudden shift to online learning. In addition, many more people were working and learning from home and off campus. In the early days there was also a lot of disruption to teaching and learning. These factors will have had an impact on usage and access denials reported in your COUNTER reports.

What resources were available and how?

Jisc collected information about publishers and resources and compiled into a list. This list is no longer updated but has been retained for reference for reviewing collections and usage data.

• List of resources for Coronavirus crisis see https://subscriptionsmanager.jisc.ac.uk/about/resources-for-coronavirus-crisis

How does the type of access affect usage?

Case 1: supplier made content freely available to all

Reported counts for the relevant titles are likely to be much lower than normal as there is no need to log in and more people are working from home (outside the institutional IP range). This does not mean actual usage has gone down, just that usage cannot be attributed to an institution and so not captured in institutional reports. In fact, some publishers, such as Annual Reviews, have reported increases in overall usage and are planning to carry out analysis and publish results. Annual Reviews have shared their initial findings in a blog post: Pandemic Usage Validates S2O Effort.

COUNTER have produced a Foundation Class (video guide) on Release 5 usage in the time of the pandemic that explains why, when looking at COUNTER reports for this year, you may see an apparent downturn in usage statistics.

COUNTER have published statements on their website:

• Message to content providers about reporting total usage
• Message to libraries about COUNTER usage during the COVID-19 pandemic

Case 2: supplier expanded access for existing customers only

In some cases, suppliers made specific teaching collections available to institutions for a period. As users need to log in, this usage will be captured in your COUNTER reports.

Case 3: supplier remove concurrent user limits on titles

Where publishers allowed, book suppliers temporarily removed concurrent user limits and credit models. For these titles, you would expect access denials to be lower than normal and usage to be higher.