Putting e-journal turnaway figures into context: using the COUNTER Journal Report 2 to make evidence-based decisions

Up to now we have mainly used usage statistics to make decisions about whether to cancel or renew subscriptions. This year we started to look at demand for content we do not currently hold, in order to help make decisions about purchasing as well. One strand of this work involved looking at all our journal ‘turnaway’ reports as a whole to see them in context. We discovered that there had been a lot of turnaways (that is, when a user has tried to access a full text journal article and was denied access), and not just because we did not have a current subscription. In many cases there were other reasons why clients were denied access to articles.