1. Project COUNTER and SUSHI: An Overview Oliver Pesch, EBSCO Information Services
NFAIS Forum: Online Usage Statistics:
Current Status and Future Directions
Philadelphia, PA
October 27, 2006

2. Overview Usage statistics Project COUNTER SUSHI The Future
Background & overview of the need
Project COUNTER
Purpose
Accomplishments
Acceptance
SUSHI
The concept
The technology
Accomplishments and timeline
The Future

3. Usage Statistics: The need
Expanding scope of E-resources
Usage seen as a measurement of value
Cost per use for collection management
Search counts to measure value of databases
Use counts to help measure “impact” of faculty research
The need to collect usage data from the growing list of content providers

4. Usage Statistics: The problems
Inconsistencies in counting
Terminology (what is a download)
What and when to count
Inconsistencies in format
Each content provider has their own format
Different labels, columns and rows
Inconsistencies in delivery
, versus phone request, versus FTP
Online versus paper
Amount of history offered
Timeliness

5. Lead in the standardization of usage
Non-profit organization includes librarians, publishers and aggregators
Lead in the standardization of usage
How use is counted
How use is reported
“Consistent, credible, comparable”
COUNTER, or “Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources”
Formed in 2002, Project COUNTER is a non-profit organization that was formed with the participation of publishers, librarians and aggregators. This collaboration was key for the success of this group. While many publishers were providing usage statistics for their product for years, they were counting different things in different ways.
Project COUNTER has lead in the standardization of the usage of electronic resources and focuses on how things are counted and how they are reported.
The ultimate goal for this standardization can be summed up in three Cs:
Usage reports should be consistent, they should be credible, and they should be comparable across products.
I’ll get into examples in the next few minutes and then conclude with some caveats.

6. COUNTER Code of Practice
Code of Practice first released Jan 2003
Release 2 released Jan 2006
Code of Practice Addresses:
Terminology
Layout and format of reports
Processing of usage data
Delivery of reports
The first Code of Practice was released in January 2003 and has been adopted by the major publishers and a lot of the smaller ones. As we learned what makes a useful report and better understand some of our mistakes, the reports were modified and COUNTER 2 was released in Jan All publishers need to apply for COUNTER 2 compliancy or be removed from the compliancy list.
The revised code of practice addresses some vague terminology, and more rigorously defines the layout and format of the reports, the processing of usage data, and the delivery of reports. I’ll show some examples in just a minute.

7. COUNTER Usage Reports Journal Reports: Database Reports:
JR1: Full Text Article Requests by Month and Journal
JR2: Turnaways by Month and Journal
Database Reports:
DB1: Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Database
DB2: Turnaways by Month and Database
DB3: Searches and Sessions by Month and Service
Books and Reference Works:
Title Requests, Section Requests, Searches and Turnaways
COUNTER addresses the use of Journals, Databases, and more recently, the use of books and reference works. The standard for book use was just released in March.
All of these reports focus on providing monthly statistics.
These reports apply to individual subscribing institutions as well as consortia. In terms of the latter, a publisher must provide a consortial-level report plus individual institutional reports.

8. Explicit report layout – “consistent”
The “consistency” goal is achieved by creating very explicit standards for how reports are presented.
Not much is left to interpretation or imagination in the latest COUNTER release. All cells in the report are defined and described so there is no question on what goes into them. The main impetus for this change was the development of electronic management systems for libraries that could ingest these reports.

9. Journal Report 1: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal
Here is an example of a Journal Report. I have highlighted the required metadata in the top left-hand corner that needs to preceed the report. This includes when the report was run.
You will notice that there is a distinction between the Publisher and the Platform. This is not a concern for most publishers, but is a concern for an aggregator like EBSCO Host or ProQuest. Services like HighWire, Ingenta and Metapress also host multiple publishers on a single platform.
The other distinction is that yearly totals come in three flavors:
A simple yearly total for all fulltext requests, and two additional columns that divide up HTML requests from PDF requests. The rationale for this was that some publishers provide multiple format versions of the same article and that readers tend to browse an HTML version before downloading the PDF version of the same article. Without breaking these two formats down, it would have been difficult to compare the usage of a publisher that provided both versions with another that provided only say PDF.

10. “Credible” – COUNTER Audit
Beginning 2007, an audit must be passed for a vendor’s service to be compliant
Conducted by auditor certified accountant or by organization accredited by COUNTER
At vendor expense
Current compliancy is basically a matter of faith and good will. Librarians (mostly) trust publishers that their usage reports are true and accurate, and if there wasn’t this trust, we would merely ignore the publisher’s reports. On the other hand, any self-reporting system that has enormous financial implications must have safeguards against inaccuracies – accidental or otherwise.
Starting next year all COUNTER-compliant vendors must be audited. Exact details about this process can be found at the Project COUNTER website.
In this last part of my talk, I’m going to focus on the last “C”, which is that COUNTER reports should be Comparable across publishers.

11. Usage Statistics: Still some problems
COUNTER statistics provides excellent model and rules for usage statistics counting
Libraries needed:
A more efficient data exchange model
Current model is file-by-file spreadsheet download
Background query and response model is more efficient and scalable

12. Usage Data Problems Expanding scope of E-resources
Data proliferation (many content providers)
COUNTER extremely helpful, but…
Lack of standardized “containers”
Time consuming to gather, assemble, report
Usage consolidation applications help with assembling and reporting, not the gathering
Hence, SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative)

13. SUSHI Objectives
Solve the problem of harvesting and managing usage data from a growing number of providers.
Promote consistency in usage formatting (XML)
Automate the process

24. SUSHI: A brief history The SUSHI Steering Committee
Nov Meetings between Cornell & Innovative
July 2005 – Cross-Industry Committee forms:
Libraries
Subscription Agents
Content Providers
Integrated Library System vendors

25. SUSHI: A brief history The SUSHI Steering Committee
July – Industry Committee forms:
Cornell University – Adam Chandler
Ex Libris – Ted Koppel
EBSCO Information Systems – Oliver Pesch
Harvard University
 California Digital Library – Ivy Anderson
Innovative Interfaces – Ted Fons
Thompson Scientific – Patricia Brennan
University of Washington – Tim Jewell

26. SUSHI: A brief history Technical Work
Fall 2005 – Technical Discussions
First tests – Innovative and EBSCO & Swets
Early 2006 – Live Harvests
University of Nebraska – Lincoln & EBSCO
Washington State Univ. & Project Euclid
Spring 2006 – Migration to NISO as coordinating body – Steering Committee continues work
September 2006 – Draft Standard for Trial Use

27. NISO SUSHI Working Group
Adam Chandler (co-chair), Cornell
Oliver Pesch (co-chair), EBSCO
Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library
Patricia Brennan, Thomson Scientific
Ted Fons, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
Bill Hoffman, Swets Information Services
Tim Jewell, University of Washington
Ted Koppel, Ex Libris

28. SUSHI Contributing Partners
Founding Members:
EBSCO
Ex Libris
Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
Swets Information Services
Thomson Scientific
Newer members:
Endeavor Information Systems
Florida Center for Library Automation
College Center for Library Automation (CCLA) from the State of Florida Community Colleges
Otto Harrassowitz
OCLC
Project Euclid
Serials Solutions
SirsiDynix

29. SUSHI
The Technology

30. SUSHI: What it is and Isn’t
A web-services model for requesting data
Replaces the user’s need to download files from vendor’s website
A request for data where the response includes COUNTER data
Using COUNTER’s schema
What it isn’t
A model for counting usage statistics

31. Web Services: the chosen approach for SUSHI
Web services combine the best aspects of component-based development and the Web.
Commercially accepted
Widely supported (W3C)
Secure
… but first some definitions
NISO has Web Services committee
Amazon
Thousands of others…

32. Definitions XML Schema (XSD)
A language for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents (reactivity.com glossary)

33. Definitions XML Schema (XSD)
A language for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents (reactivity.com glossary)

34. Definitions Web Services
Open, standard (XML, SOAP, etc.) based Web applications that interact with other web applications for the purpose of exchanging data.
(lucent.com)

35. Definitions Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
SOAP is a lightweight XML based protocol used for invoking web services and exchanging structured data and type information on the Web.
(oracle.com)

36. Definitions Web Services Description Language
(WSDL) is an XML format published for describing Web services (wikipedia.org)

37. Web Services: An example
System A provides online information about companies.
System B provides real-time stock quotations.
Using Web Services, System A can integrate real-time stock quotes into their company data.

38. System A sends the stock symbol to System B.
Internet
Online
Company
Data
Real Time
Stock Quotes
(web service)
Stock
symbol

39. System B returns the quote. All of this happens in milliseconds.
System A
System B
Internet
Online
Company
Data
Real Time
Stock Quotes
(web service)
Stock
symbol
Stock
quote

40. “Messages” are formatted in XML, and the protocol used to communicate is SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).
System A
System B
Internet
Online
Company
Data
Real Time
Stock Quotes
Stock
symbol
SOAP
Stock
quote
SOAP: SOAP Version 1.2 is a lightweight protocol intended for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment.
Simple Object Access Protocol. SOAP is a lightweight XML based protocol used for invoking web services and exchanging structured data and type information on the Web. (Oracle)
Web Service: Open standard (XML, SOAP, etc.) based Web applications that interact with other web applications for the purpose of exchanging data. (lucent)
XML Schema: XML Schema is a language for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents. (reactivity.com glossary)

41. XML messages for SUSHI Report Request Report Response Requester
Customer Reference
Report Definition
Report Response
COUNTER report as payload

42. SUSHI Architecture
The next series of slides graphically show a SUSHI transaction
Library system requests a usage report
SUSHI client makes the request
SUSHI server processes request
SUSHI server prepares COUNTER report
SUSHI server “packages” and returns response
SUSHI client processes COUNTER report

43. The Library and Content Provider’s systems are both
connected to the internet.
Library
Content Provider
Internet

44. The SUSHI client is software that runs on the library’s server, usually associated with an ERM system.
Library
Content Provider
ERM
Internet
SUSHI
Client

45. The SUSHI server is software that runs on the Content Provider’s server, and has access to the usage data.
Library
Content Provider
ERM
Internet
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
Usage
Data

46. When the ERM system wants a COUNTER report, it sends a request to the SUSHI client, which prepares the request.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Internet
Request
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
Usage
Data

47. The SUSHI request is sent to the Content Provider
The SUSHI request is sent to the Content Provider. The request specifies the report and the library the report is for.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Request
Internet
Request
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
Usage
Data

48. The SUSHI server reads the request then processes the usage data.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Internet
Request
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
Usage
Data

49. The SUSHI server creates the requested COUNTER report in XML format.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Internet
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
COUNTER
Usage
Data

50. A response message is prepared according to the SUSHI XML schema.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Internet
Response
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
COUNTER
Usage
Data

51. The COUNTER report (XML) is added to the Response as its payload
The COUNTER report (XML) is added to the Response as its payload. The response is sent to the client.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Internet
Response
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
COUNTER
Usage
Data

52. The COUNTER report (XML) is added to the Response as its payload
The COUNTER report (XML) is added to the Response as its payload. The response is sent to the client.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Response
Internet
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
COUNTER
Usage
Data

53. The SUSHI client processes the response and extracts the COUNTER report.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Response
Internet
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
COUNTER
Usage
Data

54. The extracted COUNTER report is passed to the ERM system for further processing.
Library
Content Provider 
ERM
COUNTER
Internet
SUSHI
Client
SUSHI
Server
(web service)
Usage
Data

55. Report Request: Detailed View
<requestor>
<customerReference>
<reportDefinition>

57. <requester>

58. <customerReference>

59. <reportDefinition>

60. Report Response: Detailed View
<requestor>
<customerReference>
<reportDefinition>
<reports>
<journal_report>

69. Example code for SUSHI client
public static void GetReport()
    {
        ReportRequest request = new ReportRequest();
        request.Requestor = new Requestor("11", "Requestor Name",
        request.CustomerReference = new CustomerReference(customerId, customer);
        ReportDefinitionFilters filters = new ReportDefinitionFilters(new Range(dateStart, dateEnd));
        request.ReportDefinition = new ReportDefinition(filters, "Report 1 (J1)");
        SushiWsClientProxy.SushiwsPort service = new SushiWsClientProxy.SushiwsPort();
        ReportResponse response = service.RetrieveJournal1Report(request);
    }

70. SUSHI is a Web Service which sends an XML Request to a content provider to obtain an XML response containing the usage report.
Library
Content Provider ?
ERM
Internet
SUSHI
Client
Request
SUSHI
Server
SOAP
Response
COUNTER
Usage
Data

71. Making it secure Follows Web Services conventions Levels Secure
SSL
Trusted
Server can profile trusted clients
Clients must deliver known customer ID
Authorization
Information providers can introduce customer level authorization

72. SUSHI: Extendable & adaptable
Built for flexibility
Current SUSHI standard
Handles additional reports
Allows for systematic harvesting of usage from multiple institutions
Adapts to a variety of security models

73. COUNTER: Looking Ahead
Implementation of the Audit
Tuning the COUNTER Code of Practice for Consortia
Research the need for new metrics
Unique Article Count
Research the need for new reports
Track usage by date published?
Track usage at the item level?
Special reports for Consortia?

74. SUSHI: Looking Ahead Address any issues from trial use of standard
Education and awareness
Continued cooperation between SUSHI & COUNTER
NISO/SUSHI maintains the COUNTER XML Schema
Address Additional COUNTER Reports
Books and Reference Works
Address the needs for Consortia
Promote and encourage the up-take of SUSHI!

75. Summary of Resources Project COUNTER
COUNTER Auditing Requirements and Tests
SUSHI Web Site
JURO: Journal Usage Report Online

76. Oliver Pesch opesch@ebsco.com
Thank you
Oliver Pesch