COUNTER – new possibilities with release 5 Daniel Albertsson, librarian, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Based on slides created by Senol Akay, American Chemical Society and adapted by Kornelia Junge, Senior Research Manager, Wiley, Oliver Pesch, Product Strategy, EBSCO Information Services COUNTER R5 Technical Working Group

What is COUNTER?

The COUNTER Code of Practice Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources COUNTER is a non-profit organization supported by a global community of library, publisher and vendor members. Members contribute to the development of the Code of Practice (COP) through working groups and outreach. COUNTER was founded in 2002. COUNTER provides guidance on consistent and credible usage data, reporting, and formats. COUNTER Release 4 has been the current Code of Practice since 2014. Release 4 is an integrated Code of Practice covering journals, databases, books, reference works and multimedia items. COUNTER Release 5 has been published in July 2017 and will become mandatory in January 2019. Consistent Creditable Comparable

Developed by the COUNTER Community The COUNTER R5 working group is comprised of librarians, publishers, representatives of ERM systems, and other usage service providers. The members of the group who contributed their time and expertise are: Oliver Pesch (Chair) Senol Akay Daniel Albertsson Irene Barbers Simon Bevan Sarah Bull Andrew Goldthorpe Enrique Gonzales Kornelia Junge Sonja Lendi Tasha Mellins-Cohen Paul Needham Bernd Oberknapp Heather Staines

Release 5 Scope

The COUNTER Code of Practice 5 Over the last 15 years, with the development of new technologies and needs, COP has incorporated more reports, and new formats and metrics types. This natural growth has increased complexity, and it has reduced consistency among reports. As a result, compliance has become more difficult for publishers and other content providers and analysis has become more challenging for libraries. COUNTER launched a survey about the current usage reports in 2016. Based on survey results from libraries, publishers and other vendors, COUNTER has started working on a new COP focusing on reducing the complexity of the current reports, increasing the focus on consistency and clarity of metric types, reports and report formats. The aim of the new Code of Practice is to introduce flexibility that reduces the number of reports while making the COP more adaptable for future changes to requirements. Consistency Simplicity Transparency & Flexibility Clarity

The COUNTER Code of Practice 5 Consistency Addressing changing needs and reducing the complexity of the Code of Practice to ensure publishers and content providers are able to achieve compliance. Reporting Layout Reporting Formats Vocabulary & Terminology Consistency Simplicity Transparency & Flexibility Clarity

The COUNTER Code of Practice 5 Simplicity Four Master Reports streamlined for the most common reporting needs for librarians, publishers and content providers. Four Master Reports Pre-set, Filtered Standard Views Fewer Metric Types New Item & Usage Attributes Consistency Simplicity Transparency & Flexibility Clarity

The COUNTER Code of Practice 5 Flexibility Comprehensive reporting attributes empower users to generate necessary drill-down reports with ease. Granular Reports with Attributes Specific Reporting for Data Needs Reduce Redundancy Consistency Simplicity Transparency & Flexibility Clarity

The COUNTER Code of Practice 5 Clarity Using clear and consistent terminology on all metrics types and attributes brings clarity. Reducing and renaming metrics types for clarity Using consistent metric types across all reports, as applicable Consistency Simplicity Transparency & Flexibility Clarity

Reports & Metrics

Four Master Reports are the Foundation of COUNTER R5 Reports Platform Master Report Database Master Report Title Master Report Item Master Report Four Master Reports are the Foundation of COUNTER R5 Reports

“Standard Views” Address the Most Common Use Cases Platform Master Report Platform Usage Database Master Report Database Search and Item Usage Database Access Denied Title Master Report Book Requests (Excluding OA_Gold) Book Access Denied Book Usage by Access Type Journal Requests (Excluding OA_Gold) Journal Access Denied Journal Usage by Access Type Journal Requests by YOP Requests (Excluding OA_Gold) Item Master Report Content Item Requests Multimedia Item Requests “Standard Views” Address the Most Common Use Cases

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Metric_Type identifies activities and the nature of the activity being reported on. In COUNTER Release 5, three activity groups are reported: investigation & requests access denied search Metric_type attribute is in all COUNTER reports and Standard Views. Total_Item_Investigations Total_Item_Requests Unique_Item_Investigations Unique_Item_Requests Unique_Title_Investigations Unique_Title_Requests No_License Limit_Exceeded Searches_Regular Searches_Federated Searches_Automated Searches_Platform

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Investigations Investigations report user actions related to a content item or title. Actions on part of an item or information about an item or the item itself are reported. Total_Item_Investigations the total number of times a content item or information related to a content item was accessed. Unique_Item_Investigations the number of unique content items investigated by a user in a session. Unique_Title _Investigations the number of unique titles investigated by a user in a session (only applies to Books). Clarified that Unique_Title.. Metrics only for books

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Requests requests report user requests for a content item or chapter of a book. A request is specifically related to viewing or downloading the full content item. Total_Item_requests the total number of times the full text of a content item was downloaded or viewed. Unique_Item_requests the number of unique content items requested by a user in a session. Unique_Title _requests the number of unique titles requested by a user in a session (only applies to Books) Clarified that Unique_Title.. Metrics only for books

Metric Types: Investigations vs Requests

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Example Susan is researching on Publisher Platform. From a list of search results, she opens three article abstracts and a video record. All four records are different, but two of the articles are from the same book. The counts are: Abstract Abstract Abstract Publisher.org Publisher

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Example The counts are: Total_Item_Investigations: 4 Unique_Item_Investigations: 4 Unique_Title_Investigations: 2 (Note: Unique_Title _Investigations only apply to Books) Abstract Abstract Abstract

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Example (book content) After reading the abstracts, Susan downloads the PDFs for two different chapters from the same book. The counts change to: Total_Item_Investigations: 6 Total_Item_Request:2 Unique_Item_Investigations: 4 Unique_Item_Request:2 Unique_Title_Investigations: 2 Unique_Title_Request:1 Abstract Abstract Abstract Full-text Full-text Investigation Requests

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Example (journal content) After reading the abstracts, Susan downloads the PDFs for two of the articles, both from the same journal. The counts change to: Total_Item_Investigations: 6 Total_Item_Request:2 Unique_Item_Investigations: 4 Unique_Item_Request:2 (Note, because this is journal content we do not capture Unique_Title metrics) Abstract Abstract Abstract Full-text Full-text Investigation Requests

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Access Denials In Release 5, two types of access denial metrics are tracked. No_license user is unable to retrieve full-text of a unique content because his/her institution does not have a license to the content. Limit_Exceeded institution has exceeded access limits.

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Searches There are four different types of search metrics in Release 5. Searches_Regular the number of times a user searches a database, where they have actively chosen that database from a list of options OR there is only one database available to search. Metric captured at the database level. Searches_Automated the number of times a user searches a database, where they have not actively chosen that database from a list of options. Metric captured at the database level. Searches_Platform the number of times a user performs a search on the platform, regardless of the number of databases involved in the search. Metric captured at the platform level. Searches_Federated the number of times a search is run through Federated Search Service/Engine. Metric captured at the database level. Clarified the level of capture for metrics (database or platform)

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Example Susan is researching the history of antibiotics on a discovery platform, which includes multiple (5) databases. She runs a search for “history AND antibiotics.” The counts are: Searches_Regular: 0 Searches_Automated: 5 (each of the 5 databases get credit for the search) Searches_Platform: 1 Searches_Federated: 0

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Example Susan then selects the ‘History of Medicine’ database and reruns her search. The updated counts are: Searches_Regular: 1 (Only History of Medicine gets credit for the search) Searches_Automated: 5 Searches_Platform: 2 Searches_Federated: 0

COUNTER Release 5: Data Types Data_Type identifies the general type of content being accessed or for which usage is being reported. This attribute is used when creating Standard Views for Books and Journals and is an optional parameter for the Title Master Report and can be used to generate summaries in a Database Master Report or Platform Master Report. Article Book Book Segment Database Dataset Journal Multimedia Newspaper or Newsletter Platform Other Repository Item Report Thesis or Dissertation

COUNTER Release 5: Section Types Section_Type identifies whether content is delivered in “chunks” (sections) or item level. This describes what that section is, e.g. a book may be accessed by the chapter; content in a journal is accessed by article. This attribute is an optional parameter for the Title Master Report. Article Book Chapter Other Section

COUNTER Release 5: Access Types Access_Type describes the nature of access control that was in place when the content item was accessed. This attribute is in “filtering” for Standard Views and Master Reports and is included in Book Usage by Access Type and Journal Usage by Access Type Standard Views. It’s primary role is to differentiate usage of gold open access content from content that requires a license. OA_Delayed is content that became open access after an embargo period has expired. Controlled OA_Gold Other_Free_to_Read (repositories only) OA_Delayed* (reserved for future use) * OA_Delayed is NOT part of the initial release of R5. It will be introduced at a future date (with sufficient advance notice) after further study.

COUNTER Release 5: Access Methods Access_Method indicates whether the usage related to investigations and requests activities were conducted by a human user browsing and searching a website (“regular”) or by Text and Data Mining processes (TDM). This attribute appears as an optional parameter in the four Master Reports. TDM usage is excluded from the standard views for Journal and Book usage. Regular TDM

COUNTER Release 5: Year of Publication YOP yyyy 0001 (unknown) 9999 (articles in press) YOP is the year of publication for the content item accessed. If content is available in print and online format and the publication dates of these two formats differ, the year of publication of version of record (normally the format that is published first) is used. YOP is an option attribute in Title Master Report, Database Master Report and Platform Master Report. It appears as a column in the Journal Requests by YOP (Excluding OA_Gold) Standard View.

Release 5 Reports .

COUNTER Release 5:Title Report |Standard View Reports Title Report Standard View Name Report ID Book Request (Excluding OA_Gold) TR_B1 Book Access Denied TR_B2 Book Usage by Access Type TR_B3 Journal Requests (Excluding OA_Gold) TR_J1 Journal Access Denied TR_J2 Journal Usage by Access Type TR_J3 Journal Requests by YOP (Excluding OA_Gold) TR_J4

COUNTER Release 5:Reports Example of user interface 01/01/2017 12/31/2017 Total_Item_Request Journal Controlled Regular

COUNTER Release 5:Reports Consistent Header Consistent Vocabulary, Metrics & Attributions Consistent Details

COUNTER Reports Delivery SUSHI for COUNTER R5 COUNTER Reports Delivery

COUNTER_SUSHI for Release 5 RESTful interface returning JSON-formatted reports Familiar to most web developers Allows retrieval of full reports, or snippets of usage Allows usage display to be embedded in other applications

Implementation and Transition Timelines

Contact to COUNTER with further questions/requests: lorraine.estelle@counterusage.org Additional information: https://www.projectcounter.org