Usage History of Scientific Literature: Nature Metrics and Metrics of Nature Publications

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the usage patterns of Nature publications over time, revealing that open access papers maintain reader attention longer and that early usage data can predict future total downloads.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of publication usage dynamics and introduces regression methods to forecast future readership based on early metrics.

Findings

Open Access papers have more enduring attention than Non-Open Access papers.

Most downloads occur shortly after publication.

Early usage data can predict total future downloads.

Abstract

In this study, we analyze the dynamic usage history of Nature publications over time using Nature metrics data. We conduct analysis from two perspectives. On the one hand, we examine how long it takes before the articles' downloads reach 50%/80% of the total; on the other hand, we compare the percentage of total downloads in 7 days, 30 days, and 100 days after publication. In general, papers are downloaded most frequently within a short time period right after their publication. And we find that compared with Non-Open Access papers, readers' attention on Open Access publications are more enduring. Based on the usage data of a newly published paper, regression analysis could predict the future expected total usage counts.