Relationship between downloads and cites of academic journals in the field of Library and Information Science: the case of public universities in Castilla y Leon

The usefulness of the electronic journals from the big deals subscribed by the public universities of the Autonomous Community of Castilla y Leon (University of Burgos, University of Leon, University of Salamanca and University of Valladolid) is investigated based on the analysis of downloads and citations made by their researchers. The analysis is limited to the scientific production present in Scopus in the Library & Information Science (LIS) category during the period 2011-2017 and to download statistics that Emerald, IEEExplore, ScienceDirect, Springer and Wiley have provided to the four public universities. The results show that LIS journals also belong to other categories and, therefore, collect multidisciplinary research. However, Information Science researchers do not collaborate extensively with other disciplines. It is confirmed that the analyzed providers distribute titles that interest the academic communities investigated, although the preferences are not homogeneous. Finally, the correlation between downloads and citations is verified, which shows that both metrics serve to identify the priority journals for academics.