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COUNTER: Librarians and Publishers Working Together
Online information resources are now central to the product offerings of most STM publishers. They and their customers want to understand better how these resources are used. Publishers want to know how the information they produce and disseminate is being accessed. Librarians want better insights into the way the information they purchase from a range of vendors is being used. Meeting these publisher and librarian objectives requires usage statistics that are credible, compatible and consistent.
An important step towards achieving this is the development of an agreed international Code of Practice governing the recording and exchange of usage data. The first major objective of COUNTER was to develop such a code and it has done so with the broadest possible support from the publisher and library communities. Elsevier has been actively involved in COUNTER from the outset and is represented on the Executive Committee by Marthyn Borghuis.
Start Small, Test Often
Early in the project planning it was agreed that Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice should focus on journals and bibliographic databases. There are two main reasons for this. First, these two types of content consume the lion’s share of library budgets. Second, definitions, standards and protocols for the online dissemination of journals and bibliographic databases are relatively well established. This is not the case with e-books and most other types of content; these will be included in subsequent releases of the Code of Practice as its scope is extended in response to market feedback.
In developing this Code of Practice, we have been sensitive to the diversity of the publisher community. Small publishers often lack any experience in producing usage statistics, while larger publishers have to manage data for many hundreds of individual products. For these reasons the requirements for Release 1 of COUNTER compliance have been kept simple. Compliance must be an achievable goal for as many publishers as possible if customers are to receive meaningful usage data for a substantial proportion of the literature.
THE COUNTER Code of Practice
The full text of Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice is available on the COUNTER website
( http://www.projectCounter.org). It specifies in detail the requirements vendors must meet to have their usage reports designated COUNTER-compliant. The highlights of this code are summarized here.
Definitions of Terms Used
The code contains an extensive list of data elements and other terms used in the usage reports and other parts of the code. Where possible, existing definitions from NISO, ISO, ARL and other organizations have been implemented. Among the terms defined are ‘Vendor’, ‘Aggregator’, ‘Article’, ‘Full-text article’, ‘Search’, ‘Item request’, ‘Consortium’ and ‘Consortium member’. Also defined are protocols to be observed when an aggregator or gateway is involved in the delivery of vendor content to a customer. These protocols are particularly important to avoid duplicate counting of usage by vendor and aggregator.
Data Processing and Auditing
As the way usage records are generated differs from one platform to another, it is impractical to describe all the possible filters used to clean up the data. Instead, the Code of Practice specifies only the requirements to be met by the data to be used for building the reports. A fundamental principle is that only intended usage should be recorded, and all requests that are not intended by the user are removed. To this end, all double clicks on an http-link within 10 seconds of each other will be counted as only one request. Where a pdf-link is involved, this filter is set at 30 seconds, due to the longer time it takes to render a pdf.
Auditing of vendor reports and processes by an approved third party will be a requirement for COUNTER-compliance. Detailed auditing specifications will be made available, along with a list of approved auditors, during 2003, in time for full implementation of COUNTER for the 2004 subscription year.
Usage Reports
To comply with Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice, vendors should provide at least the appropriate Level 1 Usage Reports listed below.
- Journal Report 1: Number of successful full-text article requests by month and journal.
- Journal Report 2: Turnaways by month and journal (this report is only applicable where the user access model is based on a maximum number of concurrent users).
- Database Report 1: Total searches and sessions by month and database.
- Database Report 2: Turnaways by month and database.
- Database Report 3: Total searches and sessions by month and service.
In addition to the above reports, vendors who can provide further statistics are welcome to do so and are urged to make every effort to use the COUNTER definitions, which extend well beyond the definitions required in the Level 1 reports listed above.
The code specifies that the usage reports must be delivered at least monthly and as a CSV file, as a Microsoft Excel file or in a format that can be easily imported into Microsoft Excel.
Compliance with the Code of Practice
Compliance is encouraged in two ways. First, customers are urged to include a clause in all relevant licence agreements specifying that vendors provide usage statistics that are COUNTER-compliant. A standard form of words for this clause is provided in the Code of Practice. Second, to obtain ‘COUNTER-compliant’ status for their usage reports vendors will, for 2003, be required to sign a formal Declaration of COUNTER Compliance and list those of their usage reports that are compliant. These reports will be listed on the COUNTER website and only reports listed there may be regarded as being COUNTER-compliant. To maintain COUNTER-compliant status from 2004, vendors’ reports will have to be audited by an independent, COUNTER-approved auditor. The auditing standards and processes are being developed in the course of 2003.
By May 2003 over 20 major publishers and intermediaries, including Elsevier, were either already COUNTER-compliant or had declared their intention to become so in the course of 2003.
Next Steps
Release 1 of the Code of Practice is an important milestone, yet is only the beginning of a process. COUNTER will continue to develop and in 2003 we have set a number of important objectives.
These include:
- Promotion of the Code of Practice to publishers, librarians and intermediaries, achieving widespread implementation of Release 1 by the beginning of the 2004 subscription year.
- Obtaining feedback on implementation of the Code of Practice by early adopters. This feedback is being obtained not only via the COUNTER website, but also via vendor and librarian test sites monitored on a regular basis.
- Making plans for the development and expansion of the Code of Practice. It is envisaged that subsequent releases will cover a broader range of content categories (such as e-reference works) and will provide more granular reports (such as individual article-level usage reports).
- Development of a detailed XML DTD for the usage reports.
- Defining the detailed auditing requirements for COUNTER-compliance from 2004, and completing a list of COUNTER-approved auditors.
- Setting up an administrative /funding structure that will support COUNTER in the longer term.
