To know that an article was viewed or downloaded one hundred or one thousand times by readers at the same institution is vital information for publishers. This information allows you to provide vital feedback to your stakeholders and supporters, your authors, customers, potential customers, societies, and funders. This type of data does not identify the individual reading the article and is therefore not personal data. In the hands of a company like Google, however, this information can be combined with myriad other data they hold, which could then be used to identify the individual. We believe this explains why Google has recently removed two important metrics (Network Domain and Service Provider) from their analytics reporting. You may have been using these metrics to identify the organizational source of usage and provide an indication of the calibre of your audience.
If you’re a pay-walled publisher usage reporting is typically more straightforward because you already know your customers and you’re probably already providing them with some form of usage reporting (COUNTER-compliant or otherwise). However, you may be using Google Analytics when looking at data for metrics like turnaways and denials, which can tell you a lot about your potential customers and open up uniquely data driven sales opportunities. If you’re an Open Access publisher then the chances are that you’ve been depending heavily on Google Analytics for all of your data analysis.
If you, like many publishers, have been relying on Google Analytics to provide the analytics you need to assess the impact of your publishing output, the recent GA changes are worth exploring to investigate the impact they will have on your data and reporting needs. You can find more information in this blog post from LibLynx.
PSI can leverage the unique data within theIPregistry.org to provide publishers, authors and libraries with data that will help to nurture a deeper understanding of organizational readership for both OA and paywalled content, offering actionable insights for your sales, editorial, and engagement teams. The data available through PSI Metrics includes far more specific detail than was even previously available through GA and offers greater insight.
Until the recent changes some publishers have been able to “make do”with the data available from GA – but for most that will no longer be the case. PSI has no access to any data that can identify the individual user, but we do have a lot of data linking IP addresses to organizations. PSI Metrics can match the data in your log files against our database of over 1.5 billion verified IP address for over 70,000 content subscribing organizations all over the world. This will provide you with truly informative and reliable analysis of the IP addresses interacting with your content.
Please get in touch (info@PSIregistry.org) if you'd like to develop a deeper understanding of your audience to help you identify potential authors, subscribers and supporters.
About PSI:
- For further information about PSI please see https://www.PSIregistry.org.
- For further information regarding theIPregistry.org please visit the website at https://www.theIPregistry.org.
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- PSI is an independent company and is the brainchild of two veterans of the publishing world who, between them, hold over 40 years of STM publishing experience. It was while working for major publishers that they recognized a number of problems facing the industry that could only be overcome through communication, collaboration and innovation. Through our work to enable publishers, membership societies, and libraries to work together securely and confidentially towards common goals, PSI has found itself in a unique position to encourage collaboration across the academic research community.
