The impact or the quality of academic publications is traditionally measured by considering the number of times the text is cited. Nevertheless, the existing system for citation-based metrics has frequently been the target of serious criticism. Citation data provided by ISI focus on published journal articles only, and other forms of academic output, such as dissertations or monographs are mostly neglected. In addition, it normally takes a long time before citation data can become available, because of publication lags. As a result of this growing dissatisfaction with citation-based metrics, a number of research projects have begun to explore alternative methods for the measurement of academic impact.
Virtually all web servers that provide access to electronic resources record usage events as part of their log files. Such files usually provide detailed information on the items that have been requested, on the users that have initiated these requests, and on the moments at which these requests took place. One important difficulty is the fact that these log files are usually structured according to a proprietary format. Before usage data from different institutions can be compared in a meaningful and consistent way, the log entries need to be standardised and normalised.
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