Implications of Release 3 of the COUNTER Code of Practice Vendor Usage Reports: Are we all on the same page now? Charleston Conference November 6, 2008 Oliver Pesch EBSCO Information Services

Overview Recap of Release 3 of the Codes of Practice New reports Data processing and related rules Delivery of reports Audit and compliance

Overview Recap of Release 3 of the Codes of Practice New reports Data processing and related rules Delivery of reports Audit and compliance

Recap of Release 3 of the Journals and Databases Code of Practice Key features… New reports -Journal Report 1a (full text requests by archive) -Journal Report 5 (breakdown by year of publication) -Consortium reports (for full text requests by title and searches by database with breakdown by consortium member) Data processing -Federated searching -Internet robots and archives like LOCKSS Reports must be available in XML format Revised COUNTER XML Schema SUSHI support becomes a requirement for compliance

Overview Recap of Release 3 of the Codes of Practice New reports Data processing and related rules Delivery of reports Audit and compliance

Journal and Database Code of Practice: Reports Journal Report 1 -Full text article requests by month and journal Journal Report 1a -Full text article requests from an archive by month and journal Journal Report 5 -Full-text article requests by year-of-publication and journal Journal Report 2 -Turnaways by month and journal Consortium Report 1 Full text journal article/book chapter requests by month (xml only) Consortium Report 2 -Searches by month and database (xml only) Database Report 1 -Searches and sessions by month and database Database Report 2 -Turnaways by month and database Database Report 3 -Searches and sessions by month and service CoP section 4.1

Journal Report 1a or Journal Report 5: addressing archives Librarians want to determine the value of archives and back files Journal Report 1 reflects overall usage for a title but not what years of content was accessed Either Journal Report 1a or Journal Report 5 must be provided If the archive or back file is managed and accessed as a separate entity, then Journal Report 1a can be provided If the archive or back files are not distinguishable from the rest of the content, then Journal Report 5 is required. CoP section 4.1, page 19

Journal Report 1a CoP section 4.1, page 19

Journal Report 5 CoP section 4.1, page 19

Consortium Reports The consortium administrator needs: -Statistics on overall use of the materials acquired by the consortium; -Broken down by participating member institution They can use this information to: - Judge the overall value of a particular deal -Determine if value to a particular member -Assist with distribution of cost -Identify members who may not be maximizing their use of materials provided by the consortium The previous releases of the Code of Practice were not clear on consortium reports. CoP section 4.1, page 19

Consortium Reports The previous releases of the Code of Practice were not clear on consortium reports. The result was a lot of work and uneven results -Some vendors provided reports that were merely a summary of all activity without a breakdown by member -Some vendors required the consortium administrator to request reports for each member institution one-at-a-time without the option for a summary report -Some vendors even required separate logins for each member The new Consortium Reports and related requirements address these issues. CoP section 4.1, page 19

Consortium Report 1 (approximation)

Overview Recap of Release 3 of the Codes of Practice New reports Data processing and related rules Delivery of reports Audit and compliance

Data Processing and Related Rules Comparability and consistency of usage statistics can be compromised depending on the handling of: -Double clicks -Return codes to count -Federated Search Engines -Internet robots -LOCKSS and similar cache systems CoP section 5

Data Processing and Related Rules: Double clicks Issue: -The user clicking a PDF or other link several times can unintentionally inflate the usage counts. Solution: -Introduce a double-click filter -If the user re-clicks the same link to a PDF document within a 30 second time window, ignore the first click. -If the user re-clicks the same link to an HTML document within a 10 second time window, ignore the first click. CoP section 5, pg 32

Data Processing and Related Rules: Return Codes Issue: -With progressive display of PDF documents, the content server delivers the document on pieces. Each piece sent generates an entry in the web transaction log. If all such log entries are counted, the result is excessive counting of full text requests. Solution: -The return code recorded in the transaction log indicates whether the request is the first piece of the document or a successive one. -Only count transactions with a return code of 200 or 304. CoP section 5, pg 32

Data Processing and Related Rules: Federated Search Issue: -In order to anticipate an end users needs, most federated search engines are configured to always search many databases and content sites. As a result, search counts for such sites are extremely high and no longer are indicative of specific user action making comparison difficult.. Solution: -In general the federated search engine can be detected either because of its use of a specific API or login at the content site, or by looking at the browser ID in the web log. -Content providers must attempt to identify searches coming from federated search products. -The Searches_Federated metric has been introduced into the Database Reports to allow regular and federated searches to be presented separately. -If sessions are counted for federated search activity, then these too should be presented separately as Sessions_Federated. CoP section 5, pg 33

Data Processing and Related Rules: Internet robots Issue: -Robots and crawlers sometimes mine a content site either for the purpose of indexing data or for performing text analysis (or some times for non-legitimate reasons). Counting such search and retrieval activity (if it takes place from within the IP range of an institution) can greatly inflate usage data. Solution: -It is possible to identify many internet robots and web crawlers by the browser ID that is logged in the web log. -All search activity from identified internet robots must be excluded from COUNTER reports. CoP section 5, pg 33-34

Data Processing and Related Rules: LOCKSS Issue: -LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) and similar caches are frequently implemented by institutions to ensure they have archival copies of content to which they have perpetual rights. The issue is that the LOCKSS cache will periodically re-retrieve all its contents to make sure the cache is fresh. Counting such activity as full text requests can grossly inflate usage numbers. Solution: -Usually LOCKSS and similar caches access the content from either an API or a specific IP address from within the institutions range of IP addresses.. -All activity from LOCKSS or similar caches during loading or subsequent refreshing of the cache must be excluded from COUNTER reports. CoP section 5, pg 34

Overview Recap of Release 3 of the Codes of Practice New reports Data processing and related rules Delivery of reports Audit and compliance

Deliver of Reports Reports must be made available as a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel or CSV format) where applicable AND XML Each report should reside in a separate page or file Reports should be available on a password controlled web site Consortium administrators must be able to access both consolidated and individual member reports from a single login or other alerting mechanism should be put in place CoP section 4.3, page 31

Deliver of Reports, contd Reports must be provided monthly, within 4 weeks of the end of the reporting period All of last calendar year and the current calendar year should be available XML reports must be available for harvesting via SUSHI CoP section 4.3, page 31

COUNTER XML COUNTER Report Customer Report Items Performance Metrics Metric Instance Customer ID Customer name Contact Institutional Identifier's) Item Name (e.g. Title) Item Identifiers (e.g. ISSN) Publisher Platform Data type (Journal, Book) Period (e.g. month) Category (e.g. Requests, Searches, Sessions) Publication Year Metric Type (e.g. ft_html, ft_pdf…) Count Report name Version/release

COUNTER XML Journal Report 1 Mt Laurel Univ. Journal A Jan 2008 Ft_html = 234 Ft_pdf = 100 Feb 2008 Ft_html = 312 Ft_pdf = 123 Journal B Jan 2008 Ft_html = 23 Ft_pdf = 34 Feb 2008 Ft_html = 41 Ft_pdf - 62

COUNTER XML Consortium Report 1 Mt Laurel Univ. Journal A Jan 2008 Ft_html = 234 Ft_pdf = 100 Feb 2008 Ft_html = 312 Ft_pdf = 123 Journal B Jan 2008 Ft_html = 23 Ft_pdf = 34 Feb 2008 Ft_html = 41 Ft_pdf - 62 Mt Laurel College Journal B Jan 2008

Overview Recap of Release 3 of the Codes of Practice New reports Data processing and related rules Delivery of reports Audit and compliance

Credibility: COUNTER Audit -- Status Current vendors had 18 months from initial compliance to pass an audit. New vendors declaring COUNTER compliance will have 6 months to successfully pass an audit. Audit status is include in the chart showing compliant vendorschart Current statistics on listed vendors: -Passed audit: 70% -Audit not yet due: 20% -Audit overdue*: 10% * vendors who do not have or pass an audit by the due date will be dropped from the Register of Compliant Vendors

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