COUNTER Looks Beyond COUNTER; How We Got Here & Where We’re Going

1. COUNTER Looks Beyond COUNTER; How We Got Here & Where We’re Going Kathy Perry, VIVA Director With special thanks to Peter Shepherd, COUNTER Executive Director Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference March 19, 2014 Austin, TX

2. In the beginning, we were here…

3. The ICOLC Guidelines: 1998 “Adequate delivery of usage information is an integral and required part of any electronic product licensed by a consortium.” Sue Phillips, University of Texas System Digital Library Director International Coalition of Library Consortia Press Release November 11, 1998 Guidelines revised over the years ICOLC endorsed COUNTER and SUSHI in 2006. http://icolc.net/statement/revised-guidelines-statistical-measures-usage-web-based-information-resources

4. COUNTER: Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources • Established in March 2002 • Involves librarians, publishers, and intermediaries • Work out technical details • Agree upon format • Allow time to review and implement changes

5. COUNTER Code of Practice 4http://www.projectcounter.org/ • In effect as of January 1, 2014 • A single integrated COP for all formats • Enhancements of the SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) protocol • Expanded list of definitions • Modified Journal Report 5, can sort by publication date • Flexible reporting periods, up to 24 months • Tab-separated values (not just CSV) • Journal DOI and Book DOIs included • New reports for multimedia and use on mobile devices

6. COUNTER Goes Beyond COUNTER • Two COUNTER Projects based on • COUNTER-compliant usage data • PIRUS - article level • Usage Factor – journal level

7. What is PIRUS? Not this!

8. PIRUS (Publisherand Institutional Repository Usage Statistics) To develop a global standard to enable recording, reporting and consolidating online usage statistics for individual journal articles hosted anywhere -- Institutional Repositories, Publishers and other entities. Project Aims • Develop COUNTER-compliant usage reports at the individual article level • Create guidelines which, if implemented, would enable any entity that hosts online journal articles to produce these reports • Release 1 of the PIRUS Code of Practice, has been published on the COUNTER website at: http://www.projectcounter.org/pirus.html • Propose a model for a Central Clearinghouse in which these reports might be consolidated at a global level in a standard way.

9. Article Report 1: specification for data collection by article

10. PIRUS: next steps • Rebranding the PIRUS Code of Practice as the COUNTER Code of Practice for Articles in March 2014 – it will be an optional Code of Practice, not required for core COUNTER compliance • Invitation to publishers and institutional repositories to implement COUNTER Code of Practice for Articles • A useful service to authors • Consolidation of usage data from different sources by publishers • Can be performed by a consortium (IRUS) or an institution • Development of the Central Clearinghouse • Optional use by publishers • Provide search by DOI and Title/Author • Generate reports

11. Usage Factor metric The overall aim of this project was to explore how online journal usage statistics might form the basis of a new measure of journal impact and quality, the Usage Factor for journals. Began in 2007 by UKSG and COUNTER 2007 – 2013: market research, modelling and analysis • Provides very different information from, and more immediate than, the Journal Impact Factor • Especially valuable metric for journals that are used but not cited -- in the clinical and practical subject areas such as nursing or social sciences • Not directly comparable across subject groups and should therefore be published and interpreted only within appropriate subject groupings

12. Usage Factor: Journals - the calculation The Usage Factor for a journal is the median value in a set of ordered full-text article usage data ( i.e. the number of successful full text article requests) for a specified Usage Period of articles published in a journal during a specified Publication Period. • Two categories of Usage Factor may be calculated • The 24 month Journal Usage Factor 2010/2011: all items • The median number of successful requests during 2010/2011 to items published in the journal in 2010/2011 • Different items types have different impacts in different fields • The Journal Usage Factor 2010/2011: full-text articles only • The median number of successful requests during 2010/2011 to full-text articles published in the journal in 2010/2011 • The article-level data collected in COUNTER Article Report 1 will be used as the basis for the Usage Factor calculation • Publishers will have to be independently audited for their Usage Factors to be listed in the Usage Factor Central Registry.

13. Usage Factor metric: recommendations • Calculate using the median rather than the arithmetic mean • Calculate using a publication window of 2 years • Publish as integers with no decimal place • A range of Usage Factors should ideally be published for each journal: a comprehensive UF ( all items, all countable versions) plus supplementary factors for selected items • Further work is needed on Usage Factor gaming and on developing robust forensic techniques for its detection • Further work is needed to broaden the scope of the project over time to include other usage-based metrics • Further work on organizational model to support the Central Registry

14. Future Objectives • Continue to increase the number of COUNTER compliant vendors. http://www.projectcounter.org/compliantvendors.html • Implement COUNTER Code of Practice for Articles • Implement COUNTER Code of Practice for Usage Factors • Continue to work with other industry organizations to facilitate the implementation of COUNTER and develop metrics based on the COUNTER data that are of practical value to both librarians and vendors.  • For more information : http://www.projectcounter.org