1. 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

2. What is COUNTER?

3. 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 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

4. 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

5. Release 5 Scope

6. 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 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Reports & Metrics

12. 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

13. “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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. Metric Types:
Investigations vs
Requests

18. 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

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

20. 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: 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

21. 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: 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

22. 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.

23. 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)

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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.

29. 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

30. 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.

31. Release 5 Reports .

32. 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

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

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

35. COUNTER Reports Delivery
SUSHI for COUNTER R5
COUNTER Reports Delivery

36. 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

37. Implementation and Transition Timelines

39. Contact to COUNTER with further questions/requests:
Additional information: