About the Training With the sheer number of electronic resources that the libraries are now subscribe to, acquiring accurate and timely usage statistics is crucial in providing data for collection management assessment and decision making process. NISO developed the SUSHI protocol that allow publishers to standardize their usage statistics into a common format as well as the delivery of that information. This protocol is designed to simplify and automate the harvesting of COUNTER usage reports from various electronic resources providers. This is a guided, step-by-step session that follows the April 29 NISO Virtual Conference, Expanding the Assessment Toolbox: Blending the Old and New Assessment Practices. The presenter will teach you the practical implementation of harvesting your COUNTER reports using the SUSHI protocol. You will learn what it takes to ensure you will get the benefit of this system for your institution. The 90-minute training session lead by Oliver Pesch, Chief Product Strategist and Senior Vice President, EBSCO Information Services will cover: Quick overview of SUSHI and COUNTER What do you need to harvest a report using SUSHI What information do I need to harvest a report? Where do I get the information? What other steps might be needed to successfully harvest usage? The results of the harvest is an XML file – now what? Data analysis and interpretation.

1. NISO Training Thursday:
Implementing SUSHI/COUNTER
at Your Institution
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Instructor:
Oliver Pesch
Chief Product Strategist
EBSCO Information Services
http://www.niso.org/news/events/2015/training_Thursdays/TT_stats/

2. What we will cover…
• A short review of SUSHI and COUNTER
• Definition of a Platform
• Options for SUSHI clients
• SUSHI client configuration basics
• Different platforms have different set-up needs
• View a test harvest
• Using Excel to view COUNTER XML
• Simple cost-per-use analysis
• Timing for harvesting and other considerations

3. A SHORT REVIEW OF COUNTER
AND SUSHI

4. Project COUNTER
• Since 2002
• Consistent, comparable, credible usage
statistics
• For Journals, Books, Databases and
Multimedia
• Code of practice covers processing,
formatting, and presenting usage statistics
• Compliance enforced through a formal audit

5. SUSHI
• Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting
Initiative
• First became a standard in 2007
• NISO standard Z39.93 (2014)
• Enables the automation of the request and
retrieval of XML versions of COUNTER usage
reports

6. SUSHI

7. WHAT IS A PLATFORM?

8. Platform
The online host where content is accessed.
• Examples:
– EBSCOhost
– Highwire
– MIT Press
– ScienceDirect
– Taylor & Francis

9. Platform
COUNTER measures usage for the Platform
• COUNTER reports total activity by journal,
book, database, multimedia collection for the
overall “platform”

10. Platform
COUNTER measures usage for the Platform
• COUNTER reports total activity by journal,
book, database, multimedia collection for the
overall “platform”
• There are no COUNTER reports that provide
journal or book usage by “package” or
databases

11. Platform
If you want to track usage by publisher e-journal
package you need limit the results of the
Platform-level JR1 to only those titles included in
the package.

12. CHOOSING A SUSHI CLIENT

13. SUSHI Clients
• The SUSHI standard simply describes how two
computer applications can exchange a
COUNTER report – by itself it does nothing

14. SUSHI Clients
• The SUSHI standard simply describes how two
computer applications can exchange a
COUNTER report – by itself it does nothing
• To use SUSHI requires a client and a server

15. SUSHI Clients
• The SUSHI standard simply describes how two
computer applications can exchange a
COUNTER report – by itself it does nothing
• To use SUSHI requires a client and a server
• Content providers provide the server

16. SUSHI Clients
• The SUSHI standard simply describes how two
computer applications can exchange a
COUNTER report – by itself it does nothing
• To use SUSHI requires a client and a server
• Content providers provide the server
• You need to provide the client

17. SUSHI Clients
• The SUSHI standard simply describes how two
computer applications can exchange a
COUNTER report – by itself it does nothing
• To use SUSHI requires a client and a server
• Content providers provide the server
• You need to provide the client
• So where do you find a client?

18. Commercial Usage Applications
Offer comprehensive tools that help manage the
usage workflow and assist with analysis. These
applications usually have a built-in SUSHI client.

19. Commercial Usage Applications
• Examples include:
– EBSCO Usage Consolidation
– Ex Libris UStat
– Innovative ERM
– ProQuest 360 COUNTER
– Etc.

20. Open Source Clients
Provided “as-is” and often limited to helping
with the harvesting of COUNTER reports or to
serve as a proof-of-concept or starting point for
creating more comprehensive systems. They
don’t offer any analysis capabilities.

21. Open Source Clients
• Examples include:
– MISO (ProQuest)
– Pycounter (The Health Sciences Library System of
the University of Pittsburgh)
– SoapUI (a web service test tool by SmartBear)

22. NISO
SUSHI Tools & Aids
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/tools/

23. SUSHI CLIENT CONFIGURATION:
THE BASICS

24. SUSHI Configuration Basics
When a SUSHI client requests a report it needs to
know:
• The URL of the SUSHI Server
And it needs to tell the server:
• Who is making the request
• Which institution’s usage to return
• What report it wants
• For what date range

25. SUSHI Configuration Basics
When a SUSHI client requests a report it needs to
know:
• The URL of the SUSHI Server
And it needs to tell the server:
• Who is making the request
• Which institution’s usage to return
• What report it wants
• For what date range
Customer ID
Requestor ID
SUSHI Server URL

26. Configuration using a Commercial
Product
(ACM Digital Library as example)

27. Sample University

28. Sample University
Access the Platform
configuration

29. Sample University

30. Sample University
Select the platform from
the list

31. Sample University
View the details

32. View the details

33. Add the SUSHI
configuration details

34. Sample University
Scroll back to the top and
select the “Reports to
Load”

35. Sample University
Select the reports to load.
The system will retrieve
and this usage every
month.

36. Configuration MISO, an Open Source
SUSHI client

37. MISO Client: Configuration
In preparation for this I have already installed the MISO client
from https://code.google.com/p/sushicounterclient/. The executable
(MISO.exe file) is in my C:/MISO directory.

38. MISO Client: Configuration
In preparation for this I have already installed the MISO client
from https://code.google.com/p/sushicounterclient/. The executable
(MISO.exe file) is in my C:/MISO directory.

39. MISO Client: Configuration
MISO uses a comma separated text file for
configuration. Multiple platforms can be
represented in the file and multiple reports can
be selected for each platform.

40. MISO Client: Configuration
MISO uses a comma separated text file for
configuration. Multiple platforms can be
represented in the file and multiple reports can
be selected for each platform.
Note that MISO was created for an earlier
version of COUNTER but will support retrieval of
JR1 and DB1 in XML for COUNTER Release 4.

41. MISO Client: Configuration
SUSHIConfig.csv – opened in Excel

42. MISO Client: Configuration
The “Library Code” identifies the library
usage is for and will be part of the name
of the file MISO creates. This value is NOT
sent to the server.

43. MISO Client: Configuration
The “Provider name” identifies the
platform where usage will be harvested.
It is also part of the name of the file MISO
creates. This value is NOT sent to the
server.

44. MISO Client: Configuration
Specifies the COUNTER “Release” number
for the report being requested. At this
point it should always be “4”. This is
included in the SUSHI Request.

45. MISO Client: Configuration
The “URL” is the address of the SUSHI
Server for this provider. This MUST be the
URL of the server not the WSDL.

46. MISO Client: Configuration
The “Requestor ID” identifies organization
making the request. This is assigned by
the usage provider and is their way of
identifying who is asking for the usage.

47. MISO Client: Configuration
The name of the organization making the
request. This could be the library or the
usage consolidation service provider. This
is included in the request.

48. MISO Client: Configuration
The email for the requestor. This is sent as part of the
request to give the usage provider a way to contact the
requester if something goes wrong. Note that some
usage providers use this field to send the library admini
password for their administration module (although
this technique is not really compliant).

49. MISO Client: Configuration
This is the identifier for the library that the usage is
being requested for. It is the identifier assigned by the
content provider. All usage providers will require this
field to contain the correct value and most will also
require the Requestor to have been authorized to
retrieve usage for the identified institution.

50. MISO Client: Configuration
The name of the institution that usage is
being requested for. This is sent as part of
the request but is informational.

51. MISO Client: Configuration
In this section, a “y” or “n” indicates if the
corresponding reports should be
retrieved. Note that only JR1 and DB1
apply for COUNTER R4.

52. SUSHI CLIENT CONFIGURATION:
THE “DETAILS”

53. SUSHI Client Configuration
• The information needed to configure the client for a
platform comes from the content provider

54. SUSHI Client Configuration
• The information needed to configure the client for a
platform comes from the content provider
• Many content providers require SUSHI to be
activated before it can be used

55. SUSHI Client Configuration
• The information needed to configure the client for a
platform comes from the content provider
• Many content providers require SUSHI to be
activated before it can be used
• Engaging with the content provider’s customer
service or their administrative/reporting website is
often a requirement

56. SUSHI Client Configuration
• The information needed to configure the client for a
platform comes from the content provider
• Many content providers require SUSHI to be
activated before it can be used
• Engaging with the content provider’s customer
service or their administrative/reporting website is
often a requirement
• The process of “activating” a platform for SUSHI and
getting the configuration details to add the client will
vary by content provider

57. SUSHI Client Configuration
• The SUSHI Server Registry is a good place to
start for instructions.
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/registry_server

62. Many Publishers Use 3rd Party Services
for their Usage Reporting
Major Service Provider Approximate # of
Publisher Platforms
Notes
Atypon 10 Access credentials from Usage
Data page in Institutional
administration section of
publisher website
Highwire 35 Uses primary e-mail address and
portal password in Customer ID
MPSInsight 10 Activated via the publisher’s
usage web site.
ScholarlyIQ 10 Activated via the publisher’s
usage web site.
SilverChair 10 Require password in Requestor
email. Users of 3rd party services
must contact for configuration
assistance

63. Accessing SUSHI Credentials for
MIT Press (Atypon)

70. Activating SUSHI for MPS Insight
ASTM Digital Library
astm.org
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
http://www.computer.org/
IEEE Xplore
IOPscience
nature.com
palgrave-journals.com
rsc.org
…

71. MPS Insight

72. MPS Insight

73. MPS Insight

74. MPS Insight

75. Activating SUSHI for ScholarlyIQ
ACM Digital Library
Alexander Street Press Platform
APA PsycNET
APS
ASA
IngentaConnect
JSAD
OSA Publishing
Oxford Journals
PPP
Scitation
www.internurse.com
…

76. Usage report interface

77. Usage report interface

78. Usage report interface

79. Usage report interface
URL

80. Usage report interface
URL
Requestor ID

81. LET’S HARVEST SOME COUNTER
REPORTS

82. Harvest Usage
Commercial Product

84. Choose the “Upload”
option

85. Select “Load COUNTER
files”

87. Pick a platform from
the list.

89. Click “Harvest via
SUSHI”

90. Select the date range
and click “Harvest”

91. Click the “Back”
button, or “Upload”

92. Click to “View All Loads”

93. Sample University

94. Sample University

95. Harvest Usage
MISO Client

96. Harvesting Usage: MISO Client
Demonstration
In this section we will:
• Harvest usage for a single platforms for March
2015 on a commercial product
• Harvest a set of platforms using the MISO
client
• Look at one of the XML files

101. I will navigate to the
directory where I have
installed MISO using the
command :
cd miso

102. Next I type the MISO command line to ask
for usage for March 2015.
Miso –d 201503 201503 –x
The “-d” specifies the date range in
yyyymm format (if you leave it off it
retrieves the prior month.)
The “-x” tells MISO to save the XML version
of the file.

103. We wait a few seconds or minutes and it is
done…

104. When I open my MISO folder I see the
“xml” files.

105. When I open my MISO folder I see the
“xml” files.

106. Provider Name
Library Code
Dates Requested
Report
Remember how we said that some of the
elements of the configuration file appear in
the file name… here is what we were
talking about.

107. WORKING WITH COUNTER XML

108. This is a COUNTER XML file

109. It is not really human readable

110. Working with XML
COUNTER XML provides a great way to exchange
usage data; however, it is not very user friendly.
• Commercial usage consolidation product will
handle the transformation of the XML and do
something meaningful with the data
• Open Source SUSHI clients will probably need
some help

111. Using Excel for COUNTER XML
• Open the file as XML in Excel
• Excel with map each element to its own
column
• Unwanted columns can be deleted or hidden
• Filters can be used to limit the list to just the
resources and metric types desired (e.g.
ft_total)
• At that point you have some usable results

112. Open a “New”
workbook.

113. Select XML files then
pick the file to open

114. First option is easiest,
but if you use the third
option you can select
which elements to show.
We will pick the first.

115. Say OK to this…

116. Here is the COUNTER
data in all its glory.

117. Here is the COUNTER
data in all its glory.

118. Here is the COUNTER
data in all its glory.

119. Here is the COUNTER
data in all its glory.

120. Here is the COUNTER
data in all its glory.

121. Lets filter by metric type
to get only the “ft_total”

122. This is looking better.

123. Here I have selected all
columns A..W and am
choosing to “hide”. You
could also delete them if
you like.

124. This is a bit more like it.
However, note that the columns X
and Y are empty – this is where the
ISSN would normally go. This is one
of the issues with this “simple”
approach.

125. Here is a zoomed out
view…

126. XML Conversion Tool for MISO
(this will be available on Usus)

127. This is a tool that will convert a
COUNTER XML harvested with
MISO and turn it into well
formatted JR1 (R4) in Excel

128. This is a tool that will convert a
COUNTER XML harvested with
MISO and turn it into well
formatted JR1 (R4) in Excel
Just click the button…

129. Select the file to convert

130. Wait a few seconds for a
COUNTER JR1 to appear
in a new worksheet

133. SIMPLE COST PER USE ANALYSIS

134. Using our converted file as an
example we will add cost and
package data.

135. Notice that I have already
added worksheets for Cost and
Packages.

136. I have added some fake cost
data to a “Cost” worksheet.

137. And invented some packages
and assigned to journals in the
“Packages” worksheet.

138. Back on our COUNTER
worksheet we will insert
columns and calculations.

139. First step is to format the body
of the report as a table. (This
isn’t required but I find it
makes things easier).

140. First step is to format the body
of the report as a table. (This
isn’t required but I find it
makes things easier).
For ease of viewing I also
freeze the panes so the header
and journals column stay on
the screen.

141. We will insert a new column
after Reporting Period Total

142. And name it “Cost”

143. We could type in the cost here,
but in this example we will use
the journal name to look-up in
our “Cost” worksheet.

144. I am using “VLOOKUP” to find
the Journal on the Cost
worksheet and return the cost
value (column 4).

145. But we really want cost per
use. So we add another
column.

146. Which we will name “Cost-per-
Use”

147. The value is a simple
calculation; however, if the
usage is zero we will substitute
the actual cost.

148. The value is a simple
calculation; however, if the
usage is zero we will substitute
the actual cost.

149. Next scroll to the bottom of the
table and add totals and
averages

150. We will now add package
information by inserting
another column.

151. Which we name “Package”

152. We use the journal name to
look-up the value of the
package from the “Packages”
worksheet.

153. We use the journal name to
look-up the value of the
package from the “Packages”
worksheet.

154. Now we can filter by package
and get totals.

156. We can then insert a pivot
table for analysis like this…

157. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

158. Timing: When to harvest
• COUNTER allows usage providers up to 4
weeks to process and prepare their usage
data; therefore, for some providers your April
data may not be ready until May 28th.

159. Timing: When to harvest
• COUNTER allows usage providers up to 4
weeks to process and prepare their usage
data; therefore, for some providers your April
data may not be ready until May 28th.
• This varies by provider so you need to get to
know your providers.

160. Timing: When to harvest
• COUNTER allows usage providers up to 4
weeks to process and prepare their usage
data; therefore, for some providers your April
data may not be ready until May 28th.
• This varies by provider so you need to get to
know your providers.
• If you harvest too early the SUSHI client will
get an exception back.

161. An example of an Exception
returned when usage isn’t
ready yet for the month
requested

162. An example of an Exception
returned when usage isn’t
ready yet for the month
requested

163. Key points…
• SUSHI is a protocol that allows a computer
application to retrieve a COUNTER report
• It needs a “client” application
• Configuring the client often requires interaction with
the content provider or their website
• SUSHI will return XML
• If you don’t have a system that consumes COUNTER
XML, Excel can be used to produce analysis reports

164. Other Considerations
Lots of information is available on the NISO
SUSHI Web Site, including a section “SUSHI for
librarians”.
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/librarians

166. Other Considerations
If you haven’t already checked Usus please do, it
is a community web site all about usage…
http://www.usus.org.uk

168. Other Considerations
The NISO SUSHI team is looking for volunteers to
help create Open Source tools or enhance what
is there…. Consider this an open invitation!

169. Discussion & Questions?

170. NISO Training Thursday • May 14, 2015
Questions?
All questions will be posted with presenter answers on
the NISO website following the webinar:
http://www.niso.org/news/events/2015/training_Thursdays/TT_stats/
NISO Training Thursday
Implementing SUSHI/COUNTER at Your Institution

171. Thank you for joining us today.
Please take a moment to fill out the brief online survey.
We look forward to hearing from you!
THANK YOU