Book ToC discrepancies
27 August 2026As we’ve said before, R5.1 brought book usage tracking into line with that for other Data Types like journals and multimedia, but tables of contents (ToCs) do create some complexity.
To count or not to count
Metrics are only counted when a user interacts with an identifiable item. Because a journal ToC doesn’t have an identifier, a user landing on a journal ToC doesn’t trigger any usage counts. Publishers often give book ToCs an identifier within the book. That means a user landing on the ToC creates 1 Total Item Investigation for the book.
However, we know that many publishers have a book homepage which includes the ToC. That page is often the equivalent of a marketing page or journal homepage, and is not a part of the book itself. For those publishers, you’re not going to see ToCs counting towards usage in the Platform, Database, Title or Item Reports.