Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The release of the 'top 25 accessed fulltext reviews from The Cochrane Library during February 2005' in the April 2005 issue of Cochrane News provides the opportunity to compare access to Cochrane Reviews in The Cochrane Library with access to Cochrane Review abstracts on the www.cochrane.org website. The abstract of each Cochrane Review in the Cochrane Library (access to which comes only with a paid subscription) is available for free on cochrane.org.
Objectives: To discern similarities and differences in patterns of accessing Cochrane Reviews versus Review abstracts, and, thereby, to reveal any general relationships between access to the Cochrane Library and access to cochrane.org. To find out if the popularity of Cochrane Reviews--available by subscription only--can be better understood in the context of the popularity of freely available Review abstracts.
Methods: Programmatic analyses of log files recorded by cochrane.orgs web server was undertaken. Every access to every file on the cochrane.org website is logged by its server in a series of plain-text files called 'log files'. Given that the server can record over ten thousand accesses on a single day, a variety of programs were used to reveal which of these accesses are to Review abstracts, and to which abstracts in particular.
Results: Full results of this analysis will be presented as figures and charts. Initial results indicate that the top 25 Review abstracts accessed on cochrane.org is a very different list from the top 25 Reviews accessed in the Cochrane Library for the same month, February, 2005.
Conclusions: While knowing which Cochrane Reviews are most accessed in the Cochrane Library can be helpful, given that access to the Cochrane Library itself is relatively limited (because a subscription is required for access) compared to access to cochrane.org (accessible free-of-charge), it is more helpful to know which Review abstracts are most accessed and, therefore, which Reviews might be more accessed were the Cochrane Library as accessible as cochrane.org.
Objectives: To discern similarities and differences in patterns of accessing Cochrane Reviews versus Review abstracts, and, thereby, to reveal any general relationships between access to the Cochrane Library and access to cochrane.org. To find out if the popularity of Cochrane Reviews--available by subscription only--can be better understood in the context of the popularity of freely available Review abstracts.
Methods: Programmatic analyses of log files recorded by cochrane.orgs web server was undertaken. Every access to every file on the cochrane.org website is logged by its server in a series of plain-text files called 'log files'. Given that the server can record over ten thousand accesses on a single day, a variety of programs were used to reveal which of these accesses are to Review abstracts, and to which abstracts in particular.
Results: Full results of this analysis will be presented as figures and charts. Initial results indicate that the top 25 Review abstracts accessed on cochrane.org is a very different list from the top 25 Reviews accessed in the Cochrane Library for the same month, February, 2005.
Conclusions: While knowing which Cochrane Reviews are most accessed in the Cochrane Library can be helpful, given that access to the Cochrane Library itself is relatively limited (because a subscription is required for access) compared to access to cochrane.org (accessible free-of-charge), it is more helpful to know which Review abstracts are most accessed and, therefore, which Reviews might be more accessed were the Cochrane Library as accessible as cochrane.org.