An IP-level analysis of usage statistics for electronic journals in chemistry: Making inferences about user behavior

This study reports an analysis of American Chemical Society electronic journal downloads at Cornell University by individual IP addresses. While the majority of users (IPs) limited themselves to a small number of both journals and article downloads, a small minority of heavy users had a large effect on total journal downloads. There was a very strong relationship between the number of article downloads and the number of users, implying that a user-population can be estimated by just knowing the total use of a journal. Aggregate users (i.e. Library Proxy Server and public library computers) can be regarded as a sample of the entire user population. Analysis of article downloads by format (PDF versus HTML) suggests that individuals are using the system like a networked photocopier, for the purposes of creating print-on-demand copies of articles.