Using Transaction Log Analysis Method to Determine Scholarly Information Seeking Patterns

Purpose: The study aims to report scholarly information-seeking patterns based on faculty, gender, file format and time-based usage of e-journal databases through using an unobtrusive and evidence-based research method known as transaction log analysis (TLA). It highlights the challenges faced in using the “TLA” method with possible practical solutions for the information-seeking pattern. Design/methodology/approach: Original raw transactions were collected bimonthly from the University of the Punjab’s cache servers. Ubuntu platform was used for data segregation of required HEC subscribed scholarly databases, and C[Formula: see text] notepad was used for data cleaning. SAWMILL software was used for log data analysis, and MS Excel was used to present data in an understandable format. Findings: The faculties of applied, life and pure sciences were the most frequent users of e-journal databases as compared to the faculties of Islamic studies, behavioural n social sciences and oriental languages. Females were more active users than males and the PDF format of e-journal articles was the most preferred format over other formats by the users. Working hours from 8 am to 5 pm, midweek days (Wednesday and Thursday) and August, July and September remained the busiest according to page views, visitors, sessions and session duration in available log data. The paper fills the literature gap by reporting raw log data collection, storage, cleaning and analysis steps in the context of developing countries. Practical implications: The findings may be helpful in access management of online scholarly resources for both information and system managers. This methodological paper demonstrates that rather than using the COUNTER report files supplied by the publishers, researchers studying information-seeking behaviour use the original footprints in the form of log data recorded in the system servers to describe the information-seeking patterns. Originality/value: The log data analysed were taken directly from the recording server machines and the study was extracted from the original research work conducted for obtaining the PhD degree. The work was practically conducted, and all the steps of raw log data collection, processing and analysis were recorded step by step and reported in the sequence as it is. It offers new researchers a comprehensive process and set of steps to follow when studying because TLA is complex and sophisticated. There is a lack of studies that report how the entries with “zero second” duration were treated because including such entries could cause the reporting of higher than actual usage statistics. This study is valuable as it mentions the treatment of zero-second page-view pattern during data cleaning, which has been reported less in detail before. More recent gadgets and software can be used to get more valuable information and reporting results.