Presented by Jill Emery and Lorraine Abraham. COUNTER Release 5 has brought many improvements to usage reporting. A COUNTER Executive Committee member provides an overview of how the project teams have worked to ensure that the publishers and vendors are now compliant with the new standard, and how you can verify their compliance

1. Release 5
NASIG JUNE 10, 2020

2. Improvements
The ability to see
both total and
unique downloads
The exclusion of
gold open access
usage by default
The introduction of
Unique_Title metric
for reporting book
usage

3. The ability to see both total and
unique downloads
Some platforms take a user first to an abstract of an article, and the user may then
choose to view the HTML and/or download the PDF.
Other platforms take the user directly to the HTML and the user may then choose to
also download a PDF.
The latter type of platform tended to have higher counts in previous COUNTER
reports than the first type of platform. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘platform
effect’.

4. About the
Metrics
Release 5 introduces consistent
reporting, no matter how the
platform is configured, with the
use of two new metrics:
Total_Item_Requests
Unique_Item_Requests

5. Let’s take a look
at the metrics
in action in
journal usage
ON THE FOLLOWING SLIDES WE WILL
LOOK AT USER ACTIONS AND HOW
THEY WERE COUNTED IN R4 AND
HOW THEY ARE NOW COUNTED IN
R5

9. Calculating cost per
use
• Unique_Item_Requests is the ideal metric
for calculating cost per use.
• Total_Item_Request can be used to look
at trends across time. Compare usage in
Release 4 reports with the
Total_Item_Requests in Release 5.

10. The exclusion of
gold open access
usage by default.
Two Access_Types:
Controlled: means that at the time of
the usage the content item was not
open because it was behind a paywall
and access was restricted to
authorized users.
OA_Gold: means at the time of the
usage the content item was available
under an open access license - that is
immediately and permanently
available as open access.

11. Hybrid
journals
It is particularly important to separate
Access_Types when understanding
usage of hybrid journals.
These are subscription journals in
which only some of the articles are
open access.

13. Master Reports and Standard Views
You may have noticed that some of the Standard Views, such as the TR_J1 report
exclude usage of Gold Open Access content.
This is because when evaluating hybrid journals, many librarians prefer to count only
the usage of articles funded by subscription.

14. Standard View: TR_J1
• This report is very useful for calculating
cost per use of the content your library
paid for, because it excludes OA_ Gold.
• OA_Gold means the open access articles
that were funded by the author, or the
author’s funder or institution.

15. Let’s take a look
at the metrics
in action in
book usage

16. The introduction of Unique_Title metric for reporting
book usage
Librarians buy books, not chapters, so it is important
to be able to calculate cost per use at the book title
level, regardless of whether the platform delivers
whole books as a single PDF, or individual chapters to
the user.
Note the Unique_Title metric only applies to book
usage and does not apply to journal usage.

17. About the
Metrics
Most libraries will use
Unique_Title_Requests to
calculate cost per use.
Total_Item_Requests is useful for
comparing usage over time with
Release 4 reports.
Total_Item_Requests
Unique_Item_Request
s
Unique_Title_Requests

18. Counting all the clicks

20. Platform A delivers books as single PDFs.
(note some columns are not shown to aid visibility on this slide)
Title Platform ISBN Data_Type Section_
Type
Metric_Type Reporting_
Period_
Total
Big book
of
chapters
Platform
A
978-
0-
300-
1442
4-6
Book Book Total_Item_
Requests
1
Big book
of
chapters
Platform
A
978-
0-
300-
1442
4-6
Book Book Unique_Item
_Requests
1
Big book
of
chapters
Platform
A
978-
0-
300-
1442
4-6
Book Book Unique_Title
_Requests
1
The user has downloaded the Big
book of chapters – this book has
27 chapters. All 27 chapters are
delivered together as a single
item. (The book is the Item).
In the Standard View TR_B1
TR_B1 the metrics shown will be:
Total_Item_ Requests = 1
Unique_Title_ Requests = 1
The attribute Section_Type is not
shown in the Standard View,
which is a pre-canned summary of
the Master Report.

21. Title Platform ISBN Data_Type Section_
Type
Metric_Type Reporting_
Period_
Total
Big book
of
chapters
Platform
B
978-
0-
300-
1442
4-6
Book Chapter Total_Item_
Requests
27
Big book
of
chapters
Platform
B
978-
0-
300-
1442
4-6
Book Chapter Unique_Item
_Requests
27
Big book
of
chapters
Platform
B
978-
0-
300-
1442
4-6
Book Chapter Unique_Title
_Requests
1
Platform B delivers books
as individual chapters.
The user has downloaded all the
chapters from the Big Book of
Chapters – this book has 27
chapters. Each chapter is
delivered separately as an
individual items. (Each chapter is
an Item).
In the Standard View TR_B1 the
metrics shown will be:
Total_Item_ Requests = 27
Unique_Title_ Requests = 1
The attribute Section_Type is not
shown in the Standard View, which
is a pre-canned summary of the
Master Report.
Platform B delivers books as individual
chapters.
(note some columns are not shown to aid visibility on this slide)

22. Unique_Title_Request
• Unique_Title_Requests is the ideal metric
for calculating cost per use.
• When comparing with Release 4 reports,
use Total_Item_Request to look at
trends across time on platforms which
deliver chapters.
• When comparing with Release 4 reports,
use Unique_Title_Requests to look at
trends across time on platforms which
provide whole books as a single file

23. Release 5 Metrics
Total_Item_Investigations
Total_Item_Requests
Unique_Item_Investigations
Unique_Item_Requests
Unique_Title_Investigations
Unique_Title_Requests
Total_Item_Investigations: The total
number of times a content item or
information about a content item was
investigated by a user.
Total_Item_Requests: The total
number of times a full text (HTML, PDF
or ePub) content item was requested
by a user.

24. Total_Items
What if a user looked at a summary of
the book, for example a bibliographic
record, but then decided not to
request it?
Total_Item_Investigations = 1
Total_Item_Requests = 0

25. Let’s take a look
at what else is
new with
COUNTER 5

26. R5 Harvester
Under the leadership of Oliver Pesch, EBSCO
Information Services took action! The EBSCO team
has produced the SUSHI Harvester for Multi-Site
Libraries. Its friendly name is the ‘R5 Harvester’.
It is a Microsoft Access tool which will help small to
medium sized consortia gather COUNTER reports for
their affiliated libraries. It uses COUNTER_SUSHI to
simplify harvesting with little more than a click of the
mouse.
https://www.projectcounter.org/r5_harvester/

27. COVID-19 UPDATE
In response to COVID -19 many publishers have
removed the paywall from some or all of their
content.
There is a list of publishers that have opened
content at https://scelc.org/news/covid-19-
resources
As a result, you may see that usage appears goes
down when you look at your COUNTER usage
reports for this period.
Because many of your users will be working from
home (not within your institutional IP range and not
authenticated)., their usage of this open content
cannot be attributed to your institution. Hence the
apparent downturn in your reports

28. Our COUNTER Foundation Classes
Our Foundation Classes are extremely popular, with
all the videos on our Playlist getting many views.
Each Class plays for around ten to fifteen minutes.
Each Class covers a different aspect of COUNTER
reports and metrics.
https://tinyurl.com/y4gxpj72

29. Our Manual for Librarians: Module 1
This is a detailed manual, written in non-technical
language. It will be modular, and we have just published
the first module, about book metrics.
You can download Module 1 now.
Module 2 will be forthcoming in Summer 2020 and will
focus on journal metrics.
https://tinyurl.com/ycpjy26v

30. Questions & Feedback