COUNTER: towards reliable vendor usage statistics Progress to date (June 2004) Peter Shepherd Project Director COUNTER SSP 26 th Annual Meeting, June 2004

Background Goal: credible, compatible, consistent publisher/vendor-generated statistics for the global information community Libraries and consortia need online usage statistics To assess the value of different online products/services To support collection development To plan infrastructure Publishers need online usage statistics To experiment with new pricing models To assess the relative importance of the different channels by which information reaches the market To provide editorial support To plan infrastructure

COUNTER: strategy Respond to the requirements of the international librarian, publisher and intermediary communities An open, inclusive and interactive process Representation of all three communities on COUNTER Limit scope of Release 1 to journals and databases Systematically extend scope of the Code of Practice Horizontally, to cover other content types, such as e-books Vertically, to provide more detailed statistics on journals A cost effective-process for all parties involved

Code of Practice, Release 1: Main Features Definitions of terms used Specifications for Usage Reports Data processing guidelines Auditing Compliance Maintenance and development of the Code of Practice Governance of COUNTER

Summary COUNTER Code of Practice released January 2003 Which vendors are now compliant? What issues and challenges has compliance raised? Results of library and vendor research Auditing COUNTER Code of Practice Release 2 Priorities for 2004 and beyond

Compliant vendor growth Compliant vendors Jan 2003: 2 Compliant vendors Dec 2003:12 Compliant vendors May 2004:30 Over 50% of annual total of new articles covered by ISI now come from COUNTER compliant publishers.

Register of Compliant Vendors

Achieving compliance - hurdles and issues Cost of development Concern re fulltext request count reductions Need for more guidelines e.g. searching, sessions, timeouts, overlapping IPs Need for a Guide to interpretation of COUNTER reports? Like National Rail or BookScan

Testing the COP via market research Library Focus Groups:- San Diego 14 September 2003 London 16 September 2003 Elsinore23 October 2003 Charleston 6 November 2003 International Advisory Board Round Table, London Dec 2003 Library pilot testing programme from February 2004:- Cornell University Cranfield University GlaxoSmithKline University of California University of Leicester le

What the market research has told us PUBLISHERS If you want to maximise compliance, dont make it excessively complex, demanding, and expensive - and dont keep changing it! LIBRARIES Keep reports simple and basic Postpone development and implementation of Release 2 till we have more feedback on Release 1 Put future releases in draft form on the web for a period of public comment

What the market research has told us Level 2 reports, especially Journal Report 3, contain too much data to be useful Two levels of compliance are unnecessary Add a Publisher column (helpful with aggregator reports) Allow removal of zero usage journals in aggregator reports Divide Table of Definitions into 2, separating terms used in the reports from the rest One report per file please No punctuation in data ISO date format

What the market research has told us Preconstructed reports preferred to on the fly. One user found only 25% of usage reports generated live actually worked. Consortia need a way to derive an aggregated summary report cf. compiling it institution by institution. Make clearer the protocols for measuring usage when intermediaries are involved

What the market research has told us Provide a toolkit to allow customers to combine usage statistics from different vendors automatically Issues Role of COUNTER cf agents, library systems suppliers, and libraries themselves. Role of XML DTD (machine readable) Develop a separate COP for e-Books and reference works Audit is critically important – should be credible but not so rigorous it causes publishers to raise prices

What the market research has told us Library test sites Monitor compliant vendors and highlight problems. Results include:- Some differences between compliant submitted reports and actual ones (e.g. different number of columns, ISSNs with leading zeros missing) Difficulties locating and identifying COUNTER reports amongst others Lack of historical data for comparison limits usefulness initially Problem of knowing when compliant data starts. Add Compliant from column to the register Suggest product rather than vendor be compliant

Auditing Auditing by a Chartered Accountant (UK), a Certified Professional Accountant (USA), or its equivalent elsewhere, or by another, suitably-qualified COUNTER-approved auditor, will be required to validate the usage reports Auditing principles have now been agreed Draft test scripts have now been written and are being discussed by the Audit Task Force with professional feedback from Deloitte & Touche and others RFPs for other COUNTER-approved auditors ready to go out to candidates once scripts finalised. Taken longer than anticipated – complexity revealed as scripts written

COUNTER COP Release 2 Published April 2004 in draft and placed on the website for six months for comment Specific questions asked in an introduction Should the definition of turnaways be broadened? Final version Jan 2005 and valid version Jan More prescriptive re formatting Make changes minimal cost as far as possible A new Journal Report 1a, which reports usage statistics for html and PDF full-text requests separately, but with health warning. A Table of terms and definitions specifically relevant to the Usage Reports contained in Release 2.

Priorities for 2004 Publish draft of Release 2 Solicit feedback on Release 2 draft Implement auditing Publish e-Books draft COP mid 2004 Encourage and assist growth in compliance Reach target of 150 members

COUNTER Membership Member Categories and Annual Fees Publishers/intermediaries: £500 Library Consortia: £333 Libraries: £250 Industry organization: £250 Library affiliate: £100 (non-voting member) Benefits of full membership Owner of COUNTER with voting rights at annual general meeting, etc. Regular bulletins on progress Opportunity to receive advice on implementation

Membership at March 2004 Members May 2004:130 Vendors35% Libraries28% Consortia25% Industry Orgs10% Lib affiliates2% Target for 2004:150 Join us too and help influence the future development of usage reporting standards

For more information………. Thank you! Peter Shepherd (Project Director)