Subscription Data Research Articles

The Broadband Performance Index: A Policy-Relevant Method of Assessing Broadband Adoption Among Countries

In this paper, we present a new and policy-relevant means of comparing the broadband adoption rates among countries — the Broadband Performance Index (BPI). Unlike the OECD, which ranks countries' broadband performance using raw, per capita subscription data alone, the BPI is a policy-relevant means of comparing broadband adoption among countries because it measures whether actual broadband penetration in a country meets, exceeds, or fails to meet its expected performance. We generate the BPI for each OECD country with econometric techniques that take into account a number of factors, such as income, income inequality, education, population age, and population density. The BPI shows that among OECD countries, broadband adoption in the U.S. generally meets expectations. Interestingly, countries often cited as broadband miracles, like Korea and Japan, are average performers like U.S., and several countries ranked higher than the U.S. by the OECD (such as Denmark and Norway) are significantly underperforming. Countries like Portugal and Turkey, each of which rank behind the United States in the OECD rankings, are actually surpassing their demographic and economic endowments substantially.

Shifting from Print to Electronic Journals in ARL University Libraries

This study tracked journal subscription and format data for a sample of 515 journals in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) university member libraries from 2002 to 2006. During this period, subscriptions to journals in print format decreased by 32 percentage points, whereas journals obtained in electronic format increased by 34 percentage points. Findings show journal collections in ARL university libraries reached a “tipping point” between 2005 and 2006 and that, for the first time, electronic journals dominate print subscriptions.

Shifting from Print to Electronic Journals in ARL University Libraries

This study tracked journal subscription and format data for a sample of 515 journals in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) university member libraries from 2002 to 2006. During this period, subscriptions to journals in print format decreased by 32 percentage points, whereas journals obtained in electronic format increased by 34 percentage points. Findings show journal collections in ARL university libraries reached a “tipping point” between 2005 and 2006 and that, for the first time, electronic journals dominate print subscriptions.

COUNTER: usage statistics for performance measurement

PurposeUsing COUNTER‐compliant statistics, the purpose of this study is to conduct an in‐depth analysis of usage of online journals in a group of major UK universities.Design/methodology/approachThe paper describes in detail developments, as well as other progress made on COUNTER since the 2003 Northumbria conference. It also addresses the practical challenges faced by vendors and librarians in implementing COUNTER, and concludes with future plans for the project.FindingsThe study team has successfully collected and validated a considerable set of journal usage, subscription and cost data and has assisted in the testing and validation of the “successful full‐text article request” as a possible unit of measurement of “usage” that can be applied consistently and reliably across all publishers.Originality/valueThe paper shows how usage relates to costs, institution profile and subject spread and develops a set of measures that are likely to be used more widely as indicators of the value of online journals.

Serials Standards

SUMMARY Whereas the transmission of data relating to the initiation, renewal, or cancellation of serial subscriptions has developed into a robust and standardized system based on Electronic Data Exchange (EDI), the ability of serialists to effectively exchange and manipulate information pertaining to data about the specific content and access rights to the subscriptions at a given library has become increasingly problematic. The rapid development of local and vendor systems designed to handle subscription data has necessitated that this data be standardized for smooth exchange. Ted Fons and Regina Reynolds's discussion of the standards work underway at NISO and EDItEUR, as well as the current ISO revision of the ISSN, provides an overview of the framework for potential resolution to this challenge.

Expanding Information Access through Resource Sharing and Consortia in Science and Technology Libraries

Science and Technology (S&T) libraries, especially in the developing countries, are experiencing not only problems such as poor budgetary support, lack of infrastructure and staff in less numbers with less expertise but the new marketing trends of consortia based pricing and delivering electronic information in diverse channels also. When individual libraries found their inability to satisfy the information requirements of their clients, they started various collaborating arrangements with other libraries such as, interlibrary loan services, document delivery services, resource sharing, etc. In the resource sharing arrangements, policy matters were formulated more emphatically to decide what materials are to be subscribed at each site. Unsteady fluctuation of Rupee over major foreign currencies, two digit percentage increase in subscription cost, constant or meagerly changing library budget forcing a drastic cut in subscriptions, etc., all strained libraries to adopt extensive resource sharing arrangements for costly information sources such as journals. To have an actual feel of the journal acquisition trends in our libraries, the 1995 subscription data of IIT Kharagpur is presented, along with some landmarks in resource sharing in the country. With the availability of substantial amount of primary information in electronic form and the affordability of computer and electronic gadgets in our libraries, an IT (Information Technology) enabled technocentric framework for resource sharing might be worked out as a viable alternative. The essential hardware, software, databases, personnel skills, copyright implications, etc. are discussed. In contrast to the earlier collaborative arrangements essentially attempted by libraries and librarians alone, the publisher and trade community has a major say in the consortia attempts as the emphasis will be to strike the best deals even if it requires sometimes to suffer some duplication. Some of the licensing models followed to deliver electronic information access is discussed with relevant information from few major S&T publishers. Though there were attempts from different corners to form consortia, the MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development) consortia for all the institutes under it may be operational from 2003 to provide electronic-access to important sources such as IEL online, ScienceDirect, ABI/Inform, Web of Science, SciFinder Scholar, etc. Apart from arriving at consortia based subscription and access, the paper suggests to evolve options like framing a national policy for scholarly information procuring and services, national S&T lending library, technocentric mode for resource sharing, twinning and subject based resource access network among institutions, article on demand (pay-per-view), and affordable national editions, to significantly expand and satisfactorily enhance information access in S&T libraries.

Resolving mobile database overflow with most idle replacement

In a personal communications service (PCS) network, mobility databases called visitor location registers (VLRs) are utilized to temporarily store the subscription data and the location information for the roaming users. Because of user mobility, it is possible that the VLR is full when a mobile user arrives. Under such a circumstance, the incoming user has no VLR record and thus cannot receive PCS services. This issue is called VLR overflow. To resolve the VLR overflow problem, a VLR record can be selected for replacement when the VLR is full and then the reclaimed storage is used to hold the record of the requesting user. This paper considers the most idle replacement policy to provide services to mobile users without VLR records. In this policy, the record with the longest idle time is selected for replacement. We propose an analytic model to investigate the performance of this replacement policy. The analytic results are validated against simulation experiments. The results indicate that our approach effectively resolves the VLR overflow problem.

Information drought in research: an Indian perspective

The journal subscription data of the Central Library (CL) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur during 1995‐97 is analysed to assess the prevalent information drought experienced by researchers in less developed countries. The rationale of the study, some of the myths about electronic alternatives over print media, etc. are explained. A study conducted in 1995 at the CL by gathering subscription details from other IITs to explore the options of resource sharing is extracted to present the duplication rates of costly journals. Quantification of research publications from the IIT, Kaharagpur and India are also attempted using electronic databases like CCOD and INSPEC. The budgeting pattern of CL is presented from the IIT’s Annual Report. Some possible suggestions to get over the information drought are also explored.

Residential broadband subscription demand: an econometric analysis of Australian choice experiment data

The recent roll-out of fibre-optic cable suggests that the willingness of households in passed communities to subscribe to networked services is an important issue. This paper studies the determination of the demand for network subscription. Through a discrete choice model the effect of installation and rental price on the likelihood of subscription is analysed. The logit regression is based on choice experiment (stated preference) subscription data obtained from a national survey of households. Limitations of this preliminary work and suggestions for future research are discussed.

A probit model of household broadband service subscription intentions: A regional analysis

Much recent debate concerns the effect of carrier roll-out on access to networked services. However, whether particular groups within passed communities are unable or unwilling to subscribe to networked services is also an important policy issue. This paper sets out to identify households that are less likely to subscribe and examines whether there exists a systematic link between subscription interest and commonly accepted measures of social disadvantage. A probit regression is estimated on stated-preference subscription data obtained from a national survey of one thousand households. The results show that the potential exists for an information poor class to develop.

Newspaper Subscribing: A Dynamic Analysis

Variables related to stopping different from those related to restarting. The post-war years have witnessed a decline in newspaper subscription per household in this country. The ratio of newspaper circulation to households dropped almost 50% from 1945 to 1985.1 Stempel has argued that a major reason for this decline is that the number of newspapers has declined, particularly in cities that had competing newspapers, and that a majority of the surviving newspapers have gained circulation.2 Nevertheless, this trend has generated serious concerns from both newspaper industry and social leaders. There are concerns about the loss of profits and the decay of public literacy and knowledge. Accordingly, mass communication scholars have made great efforts in describing and explaining why people don't read and subscribe to newspapers. This article builds on this previous research, with two new contributions. First, it relies on a four-wave panel dataset rather than a one-shot survey. Second, it uses a dynamic modeling procedure rather than cross-sectional analysis. As the results show, newspaper subscribing behavior is more complex than static perspectives have suggested. There is more than one process going on in subscribing, and a dynamic model, tested with longitudinal data, improves our understanding of the complexity of these processes. Static Comparison Problems Static comparison is the fundamental approach used in the previous studies of newspaper subscribing.3 Typically, a one-wave survey is conducted and then the data are analyzed cross-sectionally. The main research interests are in the differences between socio-economic groups with regard to their readership or subscribing status. Such a comparison may be sufficient for descriptive purposes, but any attempt to go beyond that will invite problems. First of all, static comparison requires an equilibrium assumption for the process under study, which means the process is constant over time rather than changeable. Unfortunately, this assumption is seldom met in the process of newspaper subscribing. Second, static comparison assumes that there is a single process caused by certain factors-e.g., people drop subscriptions because of social-economic disadvantages. As a matter of fact, there is usually more than one process underlying newspaper subscribing-some people drop out while others start or return. They may be two or more different processes, caused by different factors. Third, static comparison assumes that the causal factors are constant over time. It is true that some of the independent variables used in previous studies, such as sex and race, never change over time. On the other hand, there are approach is that it may obscure a substantial distinction between voluntary droppers and involuntary droppers by putting them together into the dropper group. Here the former refers to those who are involuntary starts, become non-subscribers even when no life-cycle transition happened to them, and may no longer come back; whereas the latter are the ones who are voluntary starts, then have to stop the subscription because of certain changes in personal life, but may return once the transition is over. If these two opposite trends do exist in real life, then a different analytical strategy is desired, which is the main task carried out in the following sections of this article. The Allison Model As stated before, this study is a secondary analysis of the ASNE subscription data. The basic strategy for analysis is a combination of two considerations: (a) differentiating the change of subscribing status into two processes-dropping out and coming back; and (b) giving more attention to the dynamic variables than to the static variables. Operationally, the first consideration implies that two separate equations are needed, one for dropping and another for returning. When the two equations are built, a question naturally arises: Are the two processes determined by the same factors, in the same direction, and with the same strength? …

Data sources and methods for ascertaining human exposure to drugs.

Estimates of population exposure based on drug use data are critical elements in the post marketing surveillance of drugs and provide a context for assessing the various risks and benefits associated with drug treatment. Such information is important in predicting morbidity and planning public health protection strategies, indepth studies, and regulatory actions. Knowledge that a population of one thousand instead of one million may potentially be exposed to a drug can help determine how a particular regulatory problem will be handled and would obviously be a major determinant in designing a case-control or cohort study. National estimates of drug use give an overview of the most commonly used drug therapies in current practice. They also furnish valuable comparison data for specific studies of drug use limited to one group of drugs, one geographic region, or one medical care setting. The FDA has access to several different national drug use data bases, each measuring a different point in the drug distribution channels. None covers the entire spectrum of drug exposures. The major "holes" in this patchwork of data bases are the inability to measure OTC drug use with any accuracy and the lack of qualitative information on drug use in hospitals. In addition, there is no patient linkage with the data. The data can only show trends in drug use. They impart no sense of the longitudinal use of drugs for individual patients. There is no direct connection between the different data bases, all of which have their own sampling frames and their own projection methodologies. The market research companies have complete control over these methodologies and they are subject to periodic changes, a situation not entirely satisfactory for epidemiologic research. Sometimes it is a struggle to keep up with these changes. Over the past two years, every one of these data bases has undergone some type of sampling or projection methodology change. One important limitation to the use of all of these data bases is that they are subscription data bases, that is, the FDA purchases the data under contract to the marketing research companies and by doing so assumes certain contract obligations. Anytime the FDA wants to release any data outside of the Agency, it must first notify the company in sufficient time for review and approval. Subscribing to these data bases is costly, but the subscription cost is insignificant, compared to the estimated cost of duplicating these services. In spite of all of the limitations of these systems, there are obvious advantages.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)