Join us for a comprehensive insight into COUNTER and the COUNTER Code of Practice including: What is COUNTER? Why COUNTER is important to library customers Why COUNTER is important to publishers How to become COUNTER compliant and the COUNTER Code of Practice COUNTER reports for books, journals and databases

1. COUNTER/UKSG webinar
COUNTER FOR PUBLISHERS
Lorraine Estelle, COUNTER
Stuart Maxwell, Scholarly iQ

2. What is COUNTER
COUNTER provides the standard that enables the knowledge
community to count the use of electronic resources.
Known as the Code of Practice, the standard ensures vendors and
publishers can provide their library customers with:
Consistent, Credible and Comparable Usage Data

3. Why have a Standard?
Not all measurements are equal,
even with the same tool
A simple web page includes
many files or hits which are also
effected by bots and spiders

4. Why have a Standard?
User behaviour tends toward making multiple clicks for a single
content request, whether by instinct or impatience
Librarians have a lot of subscriptions to evaluate and a lot of reports to
consolidate

5. COUNTER is important to your library
customers
• The COUNTER standard was developed to provide a service to librarians
who purchase subscriptions to publishers’ content
• The reports allow librarians to easily compare their usage across different
publishers’ content
• To use that information to calculate a cost-per-download and review the
value gained from their subscriptions
• To have access denials reported and see what further subscriptions are/
might be of value to users

6. Scenario
• Camford purchase two subscriptions for 2015: Journal X for £25,000 and Journal Y
for £10,000
• At the end of the year Camford’s librarian (Barbara) runs a COUNTER JR1 report
to check the usage. Journal X is showing 60,000 views and downloads, compared
with just 200 for Journal Y.
• Barbara therefore tells her Head Librarian that while Journal X is more expensive,
it has a better cost-per-download... the calculation looks like this:
• Journal X: £25,000 / 60,000 = £0.42 per use
• Barbara has 1,000s of subscriptions to evaluate/ 200 = oose a journal to
cancel, it’s likely to be Journal Y.

7. Why COUNTER is important to publishers
Most major vendors and publishers also use COUNTER reports to:
• Provide reliable and comparable usage data to their library customers
• To demonstrate the reach of the research they publish to Authors, Funding Bodies and
Societies
• Upsell using COUNTER data about access denied as the result of a content item not being
licensed or because concurrent/simultaneous user licence limits were exceeded.
• COUNTER reports and compliant data are also increasingly being used by publishers as a
trusted internal measurement criteria, analysing usage across their client base and
providing internal insight and decision making, and reporting to other stakeholders

8. Scenario
• A publisher publishes and sells subscriptions for 10 online titles
• The publisher has 500 subscribers wanting reporting of usage to
understand the value of their subscription
• The publisher runs trial accounts for prospective customers
• The publisher has content hosted on 2 different platforms/providers
and needs to consolidate across these

9. Scenario
• The publisher has internal stakeholders wanting to answer questions such
as:
• Editorial – how is content performing and what topics/new content will drive
engagement?
• Sales – how are trial accounts performing?
• Marketing – which campaigns/strategies are driving usage for targeted customers or
products?
• Product development – what changes or new features will give us the best returns
with increased engagement and customer retention?
• Technical – what should I be asking my platform provider to prioritise to deliver to
my users needs?
• Management – how is our business performing? what are our challenges? what are
our opportunities?

10. Scenario
• The publisher has additional external stakeholders to report to such
as:
• Authors – content performance, royalty reporting, user interests, publisher
selection
• Funding bodies – content performance, publisher selection, cost per
download, user interests
• Partner societies – content performance, partner selection, royalties/revenue,
user/member interests
• Investors – business performance and governance

11. COUNTER Principles
• Consistent, Credible and Comparable Usage Data
• Removal of invalid users, bots, spiders etc
• Filtering of double-clicks, last click counted
• 10 seconds for html
• 30 seconds for PDF
• Standardised layouts and formats of reports
• Self access to reports for librarians
• SUSHI harvesting
• Independent 3rd party audit

12. COUNTER reports

13. Book reports
There are five ‘standard’ book reports in
COUNTER release 4, and a newly released
optional report BR7.
Here is the detail on two of them

14. Book Report 1
‘number of successful title requests by month and by title’
Included Excluded
Whole books Book parts (chapters)
Journal article metadata
Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents)
Journal article full-text
Multimedia
Supplementary files
Databases
Searches
Search result clicks

15. How the data is tracked
• When a user requests a page which displays or downloads a
complete book in any file type, the publisher’s reporting database will
record that page view for use in BR1
• The usage will be shown in the columns for Reporting Period Total
and the relevant calendar month.

16. What you’ll see and what it means

17. Book Report 2
‘number of successful section requests by
month and by title’
Included Excluded
Book parts (chapters) Books
Journal article metadata
Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents)
Journal article full-text
Multimedia
Supplementary files
Databases
Searches
Search result clicks

18. How the data is tracked
• When a user requests a page which displays full-text HTML for a book
part (chapter), the publisher’s reporting database will record that
page view for use in BR2
• When a user downloads a full-text PDF for a book part (chapter), the
publisher’s reporting database will record that download for use in
BR2
• When a user views or downloads a book part full-text file in any
format other than HTML or PDF, the publisher’s database will record
that download for use in BR2

19. What you’ll see and what it means

20. Journal Reports
There is a combination of ‘standard’ and ‘optional’
journal reports in COUNTER release 4.
Here is the detail on two of them

21. Journal Report 1
‘number of successful full-text article
requests by month and by journal’
Included Excluded
Journal article full text Journal article metadata
Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents)
Multimedia
Supplementary files
Books
Book parts (chapters)
Databases
Searches
Search result clicks

22. How the data is tracked
• When a user requests a page which displays full-text HTML for a
journal article, the publisher’s reporting database will record that
page view for use in JR1.
• When a user downloads a full-text PDF for a journal article, the
publisher’s reporting database will record that download for use in
JR1.
• When a user views or downloads a full-text file in any format other
than HTML or PDF, the publisher’s database will record that
download for use in JR1.

23. What you’ll see and what it means

24. Journal Report 2
‘access denied to full-text articles by
month, journal and category’
Included Excluded
Journal article full text Journal article metadata
Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents)
Multimedia
Supplementary files
Books
Book parts (chapters)
Databases
Searches
Search result clicks

25. How the data is tracked
• When a user who does not have a licence attempts to land on a page which
displays full-text HTML for a journal article, they will be redirected to the
article metadata view and the publisher’s reporting database will record an
access denial for use in JR2
• When a user who does not have a licence attempts to download a full-text
PDF for a journal article, they will be redirected to the article metadata view
and the publisher’s reporting database will record an access denial for use in
JR2
• Double-clicks are also filtered to prevent inflated reporting of access denials

26. What you’ll see and what it means

27. Database Reports
There are three ‘standard’ database reports in
COUNTER release 4.
Here is the detail on one of them

28. Database Report 1
‘total searches, result clicks and record
views by month and database’
Included Excluded
Manual searches
Automated (pre-canned) searches
Search result clicks
Metadata views
Databases
Journal article full-text
Journal article metadata
Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents)
Multimedia
Supplementary files
Books
Book parts (chapters)

29. How the data is tracked
• When a user types a search term into the platform search box, a
‘regular search’ is recorded for use in DB1
• ‘Searches – federated and automated’ refers to usage such as search-
engine crawling, as well as federated searches
• When a user clicks on a result for a given database from the result list
displayed by a search or browse action, a ‘result click’ is recorded for
use in DB1
• When a user views the detailed metadata for a record in the
database, a ‘record view’ is recorded for use in DB1. Record views are
recorded whether the user has come from an internal search or
browse, or an external link. Record views do not have to be views of
the full-text.

30. What you’ll see and what it means

31. SUSHI

32. What is SUSHI?
• SUSHI - XML based automated request and response model for harvesting
usage data across a variety of usage reports and sources
• Developed by NISO (National Information Standards Organizations) in
cooperation with COUNTER
• A requirement for COUNTER compliance
• Enables librarians to automatically harvest COUNTER compliance usage
reports from multiple publishers directly into their chosen ERM tool,
making the harvesting and aggregating of usage reports much less time
consuming for the librarian or library consortium administrator
• Several SUSHI client tools are currently available through various vendors

33. Becoming COUNTER Compliant

34. COUNTER Principles
• Consistent, Credible and Comparable Usage Data
• Removal of invalid users, bots, spiders etc
• Filtering of double-clicks, last click counted
• 10 seconds for html
• 30 seconds for PDF
• Standardised layouts and formats of reports
• Self access to reports for librarians
• SUSHI harvesting
• Independent 3rd party audit

35. How do I become COUNTER Compliant?
1. Prepare your COUNTER-compliant
reports
2. Enable SUSHI
3. Send your reports to COUNTER
4. Complete the paperwork
5. Undergo an independent audit
http://www.projectcounter.org/guides/Friendly.pdf
http://www.projectcounter.org/guides/Technical.pdf

36. How do Librarians know a publisher/vendor is
compliant
COUNTER will list you on its website - www.projectcounter.org
You can use the COUNTER logo on your website and other materials

37. How you can get involved with COUNTER
• Not yet compliant? Contact COUNTER for guidance -
lorraine.estelle@counterusage.org
• Already compliant – Become a member of COUNTER! Access guides
and receive updates www.projectcounter.org
• Members are eligible for nomination to COUNTER’s working groups
and committees – they include libraries, consortia, vendors and
industry organisations, and they shape the standard!

38. Questions
Lorraine Estelle, Director, COUNTER
Lorraine.estelle@counterusage.org
Stuart Maxwell, VP of Business Development, Scholarly iQ
Stuart.maxwell@scholarlyiq.com