Garbage In,Gospel Out: Twelve Reasons Why Librarians Should Not Accept Cost-per-Download Figures at Face Value

The ease with which journal usage statistics can now be collected and ingested into e-resources management systems encourages librarians to make renewal and cancellation decisions based on a simple cost-per-download metric. However, to avoid basing decisions on erroneous data it is important to consider the reliability of this metric. There are many reasons why the cost-per-download of one journal is not as directly comparable with that of another journal as might be expected. Nevertheless there are steps that libraries can take to identify and to apply corrections to misleading usage statistics. A balance needs to be struck between usage analyses being rigorous but time consuming, and being pragmatic but “good enough.”