A Publisher’s Perspective on COUNTER: motivation, compliance, outcomes

Programme RSC as a publisher Web statistics - inc. COUNTER –Motivation –Compliance –Outcomes –Problems/Challenges –Future

Introduction Royal Society of Chemistry –45,000 Members Worldwide RSC Publishing –25 Journals >14000 Submissions per year >5400 Published articles per year –6 Databases –Book programme books p.a.

Online publishing Journals online since 1997 –PDF/HTML articles –Archive ( ) –Reference linking/Forward citations –Self-hosted and hosted at OCLC Online access –Individuals –Institutions/Companies –Consortia/Multisites

Speed of publication Around the world in 80 days with RSC journals Top quality research articles delivered…. From Submission to Publication!

Motivation for reliable web metrics - 1 Need data for various business purposes –General web site accesses –Ease of access to content Referrals Navigation –Journal accesses –Access denials/turnaways –Promotion

Motivation for reliable web metrics - 2 Contractual requirements Better understanding of customer’s use of web site New pricing models New products Repurposing – slicing & dicing New ways to access data –Eg. Delivery of HTML –Cf. Biochem. Socs.

Motivation for reliable web metrics - 3 Web Metrics - Customers –Librarians –Consortium organisers –Publisher –Authors –Journal Owners

Compliance Historical –1 st statistics system – July 2000 –Log file analysis –Accesses by journal –Accesses by IP address –Segmented by Journal and year of article publication –Delivered the raw data to article level –Select data – month/several months/years Non-COUNTER compliant! –Recorded multiple accesses

Multiple accesses Date Of AccessJournalYearArticle ID 28/03/ :27Perkin Transactions 12002b202398a 28/03/ :27Perkin Transactions 12002b202398a 28/03/ :29Perkin Transactions 12002b202398a 28/03/ :29Perkin Transactions 12002b202398a 01/04/ :57Chemical Communications2002b110370a 01/04/ :57Chemical Communications2002b110370a 02/04/ :48Perkin Transactions 12001b008317h 03/04/ :22Perkin Transactions 12001b105420c 03/04/ :22Perkin Transactions 12001b105420c 08/04/ :56Chemical Communications2001b007679l 08/04/ :56Chemical Communications2001b007679l 08/04/ :56Chemical Communications2001b007679l 08/04/ :40Chemical Communications2001b007679l 08/04/ :40Chemical Communications2001b007679l 09/04/ :19Perkin Transactions 12002b201776h 09/04/ :19Perkin Transactions 12002b201776h 09/04/ :19Perkin Transactions 12002b201776h Log file analysis

Customer journal accesses Journal Grand Total Annual Reports Section "A" (Inorganic Chemistry) Annual Reports Section "B" (Organic Chemistry) Annual Reports Section "C" (Physical Chemistry) Chem Society Reviews Chemical Communications CrystEngComm Dalton Transactions Faraday Discussions Geochemical Transactions 6 6 Green Chemistry Journal of Materials Chemistry Lab On a Chip Natural Product Reports New Journal of Chemistry Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry 495 Perkin Transactions Perkin Transactions Photochemical & Biological Sciences PhysChemComm 12 Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics The Analyst Grand Total

Present system Launched January 2005 Driven by authentication server –Session based statistics –Accesses by journal –Segmented by Journal –COUNTER Version 1 – JR1 report COUNTER compliant – May 2005! –

Version 2 release Needed to be Version 2 compliant by March 2006 Needed other web site accesses –TOC –Searches –PDF/HTML split Further development of the system required Costs of internal development/maintenance vs. outsourcing

Collaboration between Macmillan Publishing Services and IBM SurfAid Guarantee COUNTER compliance to most recent Code of Practice Presently working for: –ACS –IEEE –Nature Publishing Group –Palgrave Macmillan ScholarlyStats – new service for librarians

SurfAid home page

COUNTER – Journal Report 1

COUNTER – Journal Report 3 Page Type Full-text Total Requests Full-text HTML Requests Full-text PDF Requests Abstracts Table of Contents Full-text HTML Turnaways Full-text PDF Turnaways

COUNTER – Journal Report 4

Problems/Challenges Publisher data on customers –Never perfect! –Multiple records for single customer –Amalgamation of data for single customer Maintenance aspects - overheads –Registration/updating on all publisher sites –Analysing data - cost benefit

Problems/Challenges Are librarians/publishers counting all accesses? –Access via Intermediaries SwetsWise / EBSCOhost ® EJS / Athens/Shibboleth? –Cached content What could be counted? –Reference links – included in/linked to HTML –Supplementary data –Forward links Future delivery requirements

Counter stats delivery – Librarian requirements COUNTER statistics in XML format COUNTER statistics by IP address COUNTER stats at different levels Multi-country consortium organiser Country 2Country 1 Country 3 Institution 2Institution 1Institution 3 Levels 1 2 3

Long-term provision of statistics Who? –Publishers –Librarians, via links servers or web log analysis –Trusted 3 rd party

In summary….. Simple philosophy –Way of generating and providing web metrics in a reliable and consistent way Defines basic set of data to be reported Brings “trust” to an evolving area May be crucial for possible future journal and article pricing models

Final thoughts……. Access statistics are here to stay COUNTER forces comparability of statistics COUNTER CoP will continue to evolve Services will evolve to help libraries and publishers cope with the changes Publishers and librarians have a need to see/share the full access picture RSC will be Counter 2 Compliant by early January 2006

A Publisher’s Perspective on COUNTER: motivation, compliance, outcomes Mike Hannant Publishing Services Manager