1. consistency, clarity, simplification and continuous maintenance
Thursday, November 3 • 11:35am - 12:15pm

2. Welcome and introductions

3. Why COUNTER?
Provides a standard for how online usage statistics are recorded and reported
Lays the groundwork for a shared conversation
A living standard that continues to evolve

4. How is COUNTER used?
Provides quantitative data for how much resources are used
Illuminates the relative value of resources
Plays a role in the renewal process

5. Usus A community-led forum established in 2014
Designed to resolve issues with COUNTER compliance through publisher/librarian partnership

6. Founded 2002, to create and enforce a Code of Practice to ensure librarians can obtain credible, consistent and comparable usage statistics for their online resources.
NISO Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) standard SUSHI was introduced to enable automatic harvesting of COUNTER reports. Code of Practice has evolved to meet the changing landscape through which scholarly information is discovered and accessed. Release to Release 4, 2012.
Code of Practice has evolved to meet the changing landscape through which scholarly information is discovered and accessed. Release to Release 4, 2012.
Over 200 members
COUNTER Code of Practice now covers tens of thousands of online journals and 100s of thousands of eBooks
Compliance through independent audit

7. Objective
Release 5 seeks the balance between addressing changing needs and reducing the complexity of the Code of Practice to ensure that all publishers and content providers are able to achieve compliance
Who is doing it? Technical sub-group: Publishers, vendors, librarians, chaired by Oliver Pesch Consultation: Consultation: The new Code of Practice will be made available for public comment in early 2017
Final version: published during the summer of 2017.

8. COUNTER Release 5
A preview of the Current Draft of the Code of Practice

9. Seeking Balance
Consistency
Simplicity
Flexibility
Clarity

10. Consistency Seek consistency in... report layout, between formats, and
in vocabulary

11. Simplicity Simplify the CoP with.... fewer standard reports, and
fewer metric types that are combined with
additional item & usage attributes.

12. Flexibility Introduce flexibility...
through filters and reporting options
that address specialized reporting needs
without creating one-off “optional” COUNTER reports.

13. Clarity Clearly define... metric types and qualifying actions,
processing rules, and
formatting expectations.

14. The Reports
Fewer Reports but More Flexibility

15. COUNTER Release 5: List of Reports (Standard)
Platform Report 1
Usage by Month and Platform
Database Report 1
Usage by Month and Database/Collection
Database Report 2
Access Denied by Month and Database/Collection
Journal Title Report 1
Usage by Month and Journal Title
Journal Title Report 2
Access Denied by Month and Journal Title
Book Report 1
Usage by Month and Book Title
Book Report 2
Access Denied by Month and Book Title
Article Report 1
Usage by Month and Article
Multimedia Item Report 1
Usage by Month and Multimedia Item
Item Report 1
Usage by Month and Item
Item Component Report 1
Usage by Month and Repository Item with Components
PLATFORM
DATABASE/ COLLECTION
TITLE
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL
ITEM

16. COUNTER Release 5: List of Reports (Expanded)
Expanded Platform Report
Activity by Month and Platform
Expanded Database Report
Activity by Month and Database/Collection
Expanded Title Report
Activity by Month and Title
Expanded Item Report
Activity by Month and Item
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL
36 reports in R4 reduced to 15 reports in R5.
Optional reports eliminated!

17. Metric Types & Related Attributes
Simplicity and Clarity

18. A “Transaction” related to a content item
Intent
Metric Type
items_Investigated; items_requested, unique_item_investigated, unique_items_requested
Title
ISSN, ISBN, DOI, etc.
Journal, Book
Chapter, Article, etc.
Y, N
yyyy (year of publication)
Click
Item Name
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL
Item IDs
ITEM
Data_Type
Section_Type
Is_Archive
YOP

19. COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types
Abstract
audio
data_set
ft_epub
ft_html
ft_html_mobile
ft_pdf
ft_pdf_mobile
ft_ps
ft_ps_mobile
ft_total
image
multimedia
no_license
other
podcast
record_view
reference
result_click
search_fed
search_reg
sectioned_html
toc
turnaway
video
Release 5
items_investigated
items_requested
unique_items_investigated
unique_items_requested
searches_regular
searches_federated
searches_automated
searches_platform
no_license
user_limit_exceeded
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL
25 metric types in R4 reduced to 10 in R5.
Format-specific metrics eliminated!

20. COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types
items_investigated & unique_items_investigated: provides a means of showing value or interest in a book or journal (or cumulatively in a database even when full text may not be available). Replaces result_clicks, record_views and various other specialized metrics.
items_requested & unique_items_requested reduces the effect of the user interface on counts. Replaces format-specific metrics like “ft_html”, “ft_pdf”, etc.
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL

21. COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types
searches_regular Searches conducted by users where the user selected the database. Attributed at the database/collection level only.
searches_federated Searches conducted by a federated search engine where the user in interacting with a user interface operating on a different host. Typically, each search is conducted against multiple databases.
searches_automated Searches conducted by a discovery service or other automated search agent where the user hasn’t chosen the databases to search.
searches_platform Searches conducted by a user on the host platform without regard for the number of databases or collections being searched. Attributed only at the platform level.
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL

22. COUNTER Release 5: Additional Attributes
Data_Type Describes the level of reporting and/or nature of material, e.g. book, journal, database, platform, etc. Contributes to assessment of books vs journals vs multimedia etc.
Access_Type Indicates if the item the activity applies to was free-to-read or access controlled by a license. Options: Controlled; OA_Gold; OA+Green and Other_Free-to-Read. Contributes to assessment of current subscriptions.
Is_Archive Indicates if the item the activity applies to included in a separately licensed archive (e.g. backfile). Contributes to assessment of archives and current subscriptions.
YOP Year of publication. Contributes to assessment of archives and current subscriptions.
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL

23. Report Formats
Consistency between Reports

24. COUNTER Release 4: Report Formats
Excel version of Journal Report 1 has totals for PDF and HTML, XML version breaks them out my month
Database Report breaks out usage by metric type. Journal (and book) reports don’t.

25. COUNTER Release 5: Report Formats
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL

26. COUNTER Release 5: Report Formats
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL
Consistent Header

27. COUNTER Release 5: Report Formats
Consistent Detail
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL

28. COUNTER Release 5: Report Formats
Consistent Vocabulary
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL

29. COUNTER Release 5: Flexibility through Expanded Reports
DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION – NOT FINAL
Additional columns to show
Select one or more Metric Types
Options like Book, Journal, etc.

30. Sample Use Cases
COUNTER R5 reports In Action

31. Cost-per-use for Current Subscriptions
Filter Journal Title Report 1 to include only
Data_Type = Journal
Access_Type = Controlled
Is_Archive = N
Metric Type = “unique_items_requested”
Statistics represent usage of content available through current subscriptions that are not otherwise available as free-to-read.

32. Identify new journals to license
Use Title Report 1
Include YOP and all title-level metrics
Titles with high counts of no_license and unique_items_investigated are being looked at by your patrons. Use the YOP to see if they are looking at current materials vs older content. The Access_Type also tells you if they are looking at content that requires a license or content that is free-to-read.

33. Community Effort
Collaborative Design, Community Input

34. COUNTER is a community effort
Your feedback to our surveys in 2015
Our Technical-Sub group
Consultation in on the draft release in 2017
Feedback informed the work now going on – publishers: remove ambiguities, libraries: more publisher compliance
Our technical subgroup
COUNTER was born from the collaborative effort of scholarly publishers and librarians in Effective collaboration is still the driving force; our Release 5 Technical sub-group has the following representation:
Oliver Pesch, EBSCO Bernd Oberknapp, Baden-Württemberg federal state library 
Daniel Albertsson, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Irene Barbers, Central Library of Forschungszentrum Juelich
Kornelia Junge, Wiley
Paul Needham, Cranfield University
Sonja Lendi, Elsevier
Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Semantico
Consultation on publication: facetoface, webinar, online survey

35. Project timeline …Dec 18 July 17 Jan- Mar Sep - Dec April - June
Support
Guide
Encourage
…Dec 18
Post
Publish
Connect
July 17
Review Revise Improve
April - June
Consult Check Discuss
Jan- Mar
Conceive Design Develop
Sep - Dec

36. Anne Osterman. Oliver Pesch. Lorraine Estelle