Release 5

“consistency, clarity, simplification and

continuous maintenance”

An Introduction to Release 5

Release 5

Why COUNTER Release 5

• Current Code of Practice is complex• Inconsistencies in reports, metric types and

formats• Needs have evolved and continue to evolve

2

Release 5

Objective for Release

5Seek 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

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Proposed List of Reports

PLATFORM

TITLE

ITEM

Platform Report 1 Usage by Month and Platform

Expanded Platform Report Activity by Month and Platform

Database Report 1 Usage by Month and Database

Database Report 2 Access Denied by Month and Database

Expanded Database Report Activity by Month and Database

Journal Title Report 1 Usage by Month and Journal Title

Journal Title Report 2 Access Denied by Month and Journal

Book Title Report 1 Usage by Month and Book Title

Book Title Report 2 Access Denied by Month and Book

Expanded Title Report Activity by Month and Title

Expanded Item Report Activity by Month and Item

DATABASE

Under Review

Additional “standard” report views may be added to address most common reporting needs & names may change

Release 5

R5’s Simplified Metric Types & Related AttributesSimplicity and Clarity

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Metric Types Release 4• abstract • no_license• audio • other• data_set • podcast• ft_epub • record_view• ft_html • reference• ft_html_mobile • result_click• ft_pdf • search_fed• ft_pdf_mobile • search_reg• ft_ps • sectioned_html• ft_ps_mobile • toc• ft_total • turnaway• image • video • multimedia

Release 5• total_item_investigations• total_item_requests• unique_item_investigations• unique_item_requests• unique_title_investigations• unique_title_requests• searches_regular• searches_federated• searches_automated• searches_platform• no_license• limit_exceeded

25 metric types in R4 reduced to 12 in R5. Format-specific metrics eliminated!

Item

Database

Platform

Item

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Metric TypesRelease• total_item_investigations• total_item_requests• unique_item_investigations• unique_item_requests• unique_title_investigations• unique_title_requests• searches_regular• searches_federated• searches_automated• searches_platform• no_license• limit_exceeded

Investigations versus Requests…

Item

Database

Platform

Item

View abstract

Link to Link Resolver

View cited references

Link to ILL form

View HTML full text

View PDF

View content…

Investigations

Requests

User Action

View article preview

Release 5

Additional Attributes

• Data Type • Section Type • Access Type• Access Method• Is_Archive• Year of Publication• Metric Type

These can be used in combination to break out usage details

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Data TypesData_Type• Book• Database• Dataset• Journal• Multimedia• Platform• Repository Item

Data_Type identifies the general type of content being accessed or for which usage is being reported.

This attribute is used when defining Book Reports and Journal Reports and is an optional parameter for the Expanded Title Reports and can be used to generate summaries in an Expanded Database Report or an Expanded Platform Report.

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Section TypesSection_Type• Article• Book• Chapter• Section

Section_Type when content is delivered in “chunks” (sections) 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 Expanded Title Reports.

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Access TypesAccess_Type• Controlled• OA_Delayed* (reserved for future use)• OA_Gold• Other_Free_to_Read (repositories only)

Access_Type describes the nature of access control that was in place when the content item was accessed.

This attribute appears in Journal Title Report 1 and allows usage of open access content to be separated from content that requires a license.

OA_Delayed is access to content that became open access after an embargo period had expired.

* Separate values of “OA_Gold_APC” and “OA_Gold_Non_APC” in original proposal have been simplified to just “OA_Gold” due to complexity required to implement the separate values.

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Access Methods Access_Method

• Regular• TDM

Access_Method is an attribute indicating whether the usage related to investigations and requests was generated 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 Expanded Title Report.

TDM usage is excluded from the standard Journal and Book reports.

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Year of Publication Is_Archive

• 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 the print will be used.

This attribute appears as an attribute in Journal Title Report 2 as well as both Book Reports and as an optional parameter in the Expanded Title Report.

Release 5

R5’s Simplified Report FormatsSimplicity and Clarity

Release 5

COUNTER Release 4: Report Formats

Database Report breaks out usage by metric type. Journal (and book)

reports don’t.

Excel version of Journal Report 1 has totals for PDF and HTML, XML

version breaks them out by month

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Report Formats

Consistent Header

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Report Formats

Consistent Detail

Release 5

COUNTER Release 5: Report Formats

Consistent Vocabulary

Release 5

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

Release 5

Addressing Community Feedback

Release 5

Amendments to remove implementation challenges

• Is_Archive will be eliminated• OA_Gold_Non_APC will be eliminated• Other_Free_To_Read will not apply to publishers

(only IRs).• OA_Delayed will be included in R5 but designated as

"reserved for future use " and to be introduced at some future time given the complexity for implementation

• Reports will be longer. We are looking how to limit standard views (reports) to just those metric types and attributes need for the intended purpose. This will keep the row count lower.

Release 5

Noting where

clarification and

guidance is required

• The new metrics Investigations and Requests are not yet well understood• Concern about HTML and PDF • Creating examples with real data on how

unique item requests may impact cost per use analysis. • The example data will be to inform both

librarians and publishers on the effects of these new metrics. • The COUNTER requirement of keeping R4

reports available through the first year of will provide ability to compare results and get used to the change in metrics.

Release 5

Things we cannot

directly address

• Sessions• modern interfaces make sessions hard to

capture

• Can the report header on a separate tab?• Larger reports downloaded as TSV, there are

no tabs• Excel and Google Sheets allows users to

“Freeze” the header row

Release 5

New approach

es

• Concerns about no reporting of zero usage• Not all publishers produce their COUNTER

statistics from the same system they use to manage their access control • COUNTER is being represented on a new

NISO initiative, currently referred to as KBART-Automation for SUSHI harvesting of BOTH usage and entitlements

• Journal Title Report 5 considered as critical for library decision-making • Year of Publication allows libraries interpret

the data for packages

Release 5

New approach

es

• Consortium Reports• Due to size, creating and consuming Release

4 consortium reports was not always possible• COUNTER is committed to Open Source

tools that can fetch all member usage through a single call

Release 5

Project timeline

SupportGuide

Encourage

Jul 2017 – Dec 2018

PostPublish

Connect

Jul2017

ReviewRevise

Improve

Apr – Jun2017

ConsultCheck

Discuss

Jan- Apr 2017

ConceiveDesign

Develop

Sep – Dec 2016

Jan 2019

Release 5

We want your feedbackThe Draft Code of Practice is available online at:https://www.projectcounter.org/counter-release-5-code-practice/http://www.usus.org.uk/counter-release-5-draft-code-of-practice-is-live/

Please review the Code of Practice, complete the survey and provide any feedback by Easter!We will use your feedback to inform the final version of Release 5 and to help develop opportunities for education and communication

More information can be found on the COUNTER website https://www.projectcounter.org/

and the Usus website http://www.usus.org.uk/