<p>Springer provides access counts for each of its published articles. These currently available access counts constitute a constrained bibliometric measurement instrument. This paper asks whether a noisy, platform-reported metric, characterized by irregular updating and limited metadata, can nevertheless recover known bibliometric regularities. We evaluate Springer access counts as a bibliometric indicator in two main ways. First, they may serve as an early predictor of citations, since access statistics are available immediately whereas citations accumulate only later. Second, the dynamics of access counts may provide descriptive evidence on temporal variation in research-related access activity, such as during weekends and summer months. We collected access counts for more than 1,500 articles from seven journals over the course of one year. We find that articles receiving more accesses also go on to receive more citations: a 10% increase in accesses is associated with approximately a 10% increase in citations nine months later. We also find that observed access activity is about 11% lower on weekends and about 50% lower during the summer months. These findings suggest that Springer access counts contain useful bibliometric information despite their limitations.</p>