COUNTER/UKSG webinar COUNTER FOR PUBLISHERS Lorraine Estelle, COUNTER Stuart Maxwell, Scholarly iQ

What is COUNTER COUNTER provides the standard that enables the knowledge community to count the use of electronic resources. Known as the Code of Practice, the standard ensures vendors and publishers can provide their library customers with: Consistent, Credible and Comparable Usage Data

Why have a Standard? Not all measurements are equal, even with the same tool A simple web page includes many files or hits which are also effected by bots and spiders

Why have a Standard? User behaviour tends toward making multiple clicks for a single content request, whether by instinct or impatience Librarians have a lot of subscriptions to evaluate and a lot of reports to consolidate

COUNTER is important to your library customers The COUNTER standard was developed to provide a service to librarians who purchase subscriptions to publishers’ content The reports allow librarians to easily compare their usage across different publishers’ content To use that information to calculate a cost-per-download and review the value gained from their subscriptions To have access denials reported and see what further subscriptions are/ might be of value to users

Scenario Camford purchase two subscriptions for 2015: Journal X for £25,000 and Journal Y for £10,000 At the end of the year Camford’s librarian (Barbara) runs a COUNTER JR1 report to check the usage. Journal X is showing 60,000 views and downloads, compared with just 200 for Journal Y. Barbara therefore tells her Head Librarian that while Journal X is more expensive, it has a better cost-per-download... the calculation looks like this: Journal X: £25,000 / 60,000 = £0.42 per use Barbara has 1,000s of subscriptions to evaluate/ 200 = oose a journal to cancel, it’s likely to be Journal Y.

Why COUNTER is important to publishers Most major vendors and publishers also use COUNTER reports to: Provide reliable and comparable usage data to their library customers To demonstrate the reach of the research they publish to Authors, Funding Bodies and Societies Upsell using COUNTER data about access denied as the result of a content item not being licensed or because concurrent/simultaneous user licence limits were exceeded. COUNTER reports and compliant data are also increasingly being used by publishers as a trusted internal measurement criteria, analysing usage across their client base and providing internal insight and decision making, and reporting to other stakeholders

Scenario A publisher publishes and sells subscriptions for 10 online titles The publisher has 500 subscribers wanting reporting of usage to understand the value of their subscription The publisher runs trial accounts for prospective customers The publisher has content hosted on 2 different platforms/providers and needs to consolidate across these

Scenario The publisher has internal stakeholders wanting to answer questions such as: Editorial – how is content performing and what topics/new content will drive engagement? Sales – how are trial accounts performing? Marketing – which campaigns/strategies are driving usage for targeted customers or products? Product development – what changes or new features will give us the best returns with increased engagement and customer retention? Technical – what should I be asking my platform provider to prioritise to deliver to my users needs? Management – how is our business performing? what are our challenges? what are our opportunities?

Scenario The publisher has additional external stakeholders to report to such as: Authors – content performance, royalty reporting, user interests, publisher selection Funding bodies – content performance, publisher selection, cost per download, user interests Partner societies – content performance, partner selection, royalties/revenue, user/member interests Investors – business performance and governance

COUNTER Principles Consistent, Credible and Comparable Usage Data Removal of invalid users, bots, spiders etc Filtering of double-clicks, last click counted 10 seconds for html 30 seconds for PDF Standardised layouts and formats of reports Self access to reports for librarians SUSHI harvesting Independent 3 rd party audit

COUNTER reports

Book reports There are five ‘standard’ book reports in COUNTER release 4, and a newly released optional report BR7. Here is the detail on two of them

Book Report 1 ‘number of successful title requests by month and by title’ IncludedExcluded Whole booksBook parts (chapters) Journal article metadata Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents) Journal article full-text Multimedia Supplementary files Databases Searches Search result clicks

How the data is tracked When a user requests a page which displays or downloads a complete book in any file type, the publisher’s reporting database will record that page view for use in BR1 The usage will be shown in the columns for Reporting Period Total and the relevant calendar month.

What you’ll see and what it means

Book Report 2 ‘number of successful section requests by month and by title’ IncludedExcluded Book parts (chapters)Books Journal article metadata Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents) Journal article full-text Multimedia Supplementary files Databases Searches Search result clicks

How the data is tracked When a user requests a page which displays full-text HTML for a book part (chapter), the publisher’s reporting database will record that page view for use in BR2 When a user downloads a full-text PDF for a book part (chapter), the publisher’s reporting database will record that download for use in BR2 When a user views or downloads a book part full-text file in any format other than HTML or PDF, the publisher’s database will record that download for use in BR2

What you’ll see and what it means

Journal Reports There is a combination of ‘standard’ and ‘optional’ journal reports in COUNTER release 4. Here is the detail on two of them

Journal Report 1 ‘number of successful full-text article requests by month and by journal’ IncludedExcluded Journal article full textJournal article metadata Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents) Multimedia Supplementary files Books Book parts (chapters) Databases Searches Search result clicks

How the data is tracked When a user requests a page which displays full-text HTML for a journal article, the publisher’s reporting database will record that page view for use in JR1. When a user downloads a full-text PDF for a journal article, the publisher’s reporting database will record that download for use in JR1. When a user views or downloads a full-text file in any format other than HTML or PDF, the publisher’s database will record that download for use in JR1.

What you’ll see and what it means

Journal Report 2 ‘access denied to full-text articles by month, journal and category’ IncludedExcluded Journal article full textJournal article metadata Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents) Multimedia Supplementary files Books Book parts (chapters) Databases Searches Search result clicks

How the data is tracked When a user who does not have a licence attempts to land on a page which displays full-text HTML for a journal article, they will be redirected to the article metadata view and the publisher’s reporting database will record an access denial for use in JR2 When a user who does not have a licence attempts to download a full-text PDF for a journal article, they will be redirected to the article metadata view and the publisher’s reporting database will record an access denial for use in JR2 Double-clicks are also filtered to prevent inflated reporting of access denials

What you’ll see and what it means

Database Reports There are three ‘standard’ database reports in COUNTER release 4. Here is the detail on one of them

Database Report 1 ‘total searches, result clicks and record views by month and database’ IncludedExcluded Manual searches Automated (pre-canned) searches Search result clicks Metadata views Databases Journal article full-text Journal article metadata Journal article lists (e.g. issue contents) Multimedia Supplementary files Books Book parts (chapters)

How the data is tracked When a user types a search term into the platform search box, a ‘regular search’ is recorded for use in DB1 ‘Searches – federated and automated’ refers to usage such as search- engine crawling, as well as federated searches When a user clicks on a result for a given database from the result list displayed by a search or browse action, a ‘result click’ is recorded for use in DB1 When a user views the detailed metadata for a record in the database, a ‘record view’ is recorded for use in DB1. Record views are recorded whether the user has come from an internal search or browse, or an external link. Record views do not have to be views of the full-text.

What you’ll see and what it means

SUSHI

What is SUSHI? SUSHI - XML based automated request and response model for harvesting usage data across a variety of usage reports and sources Developed by NISO (National Information Standards Organizations) in cooperation with COUNTER A requirement for COUNTER compliance Enables librarians to automatically harvest COUNTER compliance usage reports from multiple publishers directly into their chosen ERM tool, making the harvesting and aggregating of usage reports much less time consuming for the librarian or library consortium administrator Several SUSHI client tools are currently available through various vendors

Becoming COUNTER Compliant

COUNTER Principles Consistent, Credible and Comparable Usage Data Removal of invalid users, bots, spiders etc Filtering of double-clicks, last click counted 10 seconds for html 30 seconds for PDF Standardised layouts and formats of reports Self access to reports for librarians SUSHI harvesting Independent 3 rd party audit

How do I become COUNTER Compliant? 1.Prepare your COUNTER-compliant reports 2.Enable SUSHI 3.Send your reports to COUNTER 4.Complete the paperwork 5.Undergo an independent audit

How do Librarians know a publisher/vendor is compliant COUNTER will list you on its website - You can use the COUNTER logo on your website and other materials

How you can get involved with COUNTER Not yet compliant? Contact COUNTER for guidance - Already compliant – Become a member of COUNTER! Access guides and receive updates Members are eligible for nomination to COUNTER’s working groups and committees – they include libraries, consortia, vendors and industry organisations, and they shape the standard!

Questions Lorraine Estelle, Director, COUNTER Stuart Maxwell, VP of Business Development, Scholarly iQ