From January – December 2006, Hopkins researchers downloaded 1,161,063 full text articles from ScienceDirect. So far, for statistics received from January – September 2007, Hopkins researchers have downloaded 867,247 full text articles, which is 1.5% down from last year at this time. With a few months to go before I have a full year’s worth of data, I’m wondering if we will meet or exceed last year’s number. Historically, October is one of the busiest months for use of library resources, so I suspect we passed a million uses for ScienceDirect either late in October or early November.When I graph out our use of electronic resources, I see a really lovely picture of an academic year. A slow build up of use in January and February with a peak in March/April for mid-terms. There is gradually a decline during the summer months, and the process begins again for the fall semester with a gradual increase in August and September as classes gear up, a spike in October/November and the decline for the year end.
But back to ScienceDirect. After Nature, ScienceDirect is the product that gets the most use. We have 2,097 titles available for Hopkins use in the ScienceDirect package. Of those titles, 23 are in our top 50 titles list. From Jan. – Sept. 2007 those 23 titles account for 267,353 downloads or 44% of our top 50 uses. I have to wonder, yet again, what are you people doing with all these journal articles.
So you are probably wondering what the top ScienceDirect titles are, no? Well here’s the top 10 from Jan-Sept 2007:
    1. Cell (44,590 uses)
    2. Lancet (40,046 uses)
    3. Neuron (24,506 uses)
    4. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (12,976)
    5. Current Biology (11,361 uses)
    6. Molecular Cell (11,158 uses)
    7. Journal of the American College of Cardiology (10,453 uses)
    8. Social Science and Medicine (9,901 uses)
    9. Journal of Molecular Biology (8,927 uses)
   10. Immunity (8,235 uses)
Keep working so hard, but it does make me wonder—what are you all doing for fun? Reading journal articles?