This document discusses usage data in scholarly publishing and provides an update on COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources). It summarizes research on how scientists access and read scholarly articles. It then outlines the COUNTER code of practice for standardized reporting of online usage statistics and compliance certification through independent audits. Finally, it discusses how COUNTER data can be used to derive both local and global metrics and highlights future challenges and developments for COUNTER.

1. Usage data in the publishing world
and an update on COUNTER
Peter
Shepherd
Director
COUNTER
June 2007

2. If I may be so bold as to inquire, to what degree do you
wish to interact with Franz Kafka?

3. Average Time Spent and Number of
Articles Read Per Year Per Scientist
(Tenopir et al)
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
1977 1978-
1983
1984 1985-
1989
1990-
1993
1994-
1998
2000-
2001
Number Read
Hours Spent

4. Scholarly Article Reading
Work Field Articles
Reading
(Per Year)
Time Spent
(Hours)
Time Per
Article (Min)
University
Medical
Faculty
~322 118 22
Chemists ~276 198 43
Physicists ~204 153 45
Engineers ~72 97 81

5. Browsing Searching
 Core titles
 Current issues
 Background
 Current awareness
 New topics
 Old articles
 Primary research
 For writing

6. Sources of Reading
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
AAS ORNL UTK
Paper
Other e-
E-prints
E-journals

7. Publishers need usage statistics
 To demonstrate that reduced usage of print issues
has been compensated by increased online usage
 To assess the relative importance of the various
channels via which its content reaches the market
 To experiment with new pricing models
 To support editorial policy
 To obtain improved market analysis/demographics
 To inform authors where and how articles are used
 To improve site design and navigation
 To plan infrastructure, e.g. mirror sites/caches

8. So how are we getting there?
 ICOLC Guidelines for statistical measurement of
usage of web-based information resources
 National Commission on Libraries and Information
Science (NCLIS) Electronic access and use-related
measures
 NISO – Z39.7 (Library Statistics)
 ISO – 2789 (library statistics) and 11563 (library
performance measures)
 MESUR – investigate metrics derived from the
network-based usage of scholarly information
 COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked
Electronic Resources)

9. Background
 Understanding usage
 Different approaches
 Role of usage statistics
 Usage statistics
 Should enlighten rather than obscure
 Should be practical
 Should be reliable
 Are only part of the story
 Should be used in context
 COUNTER
 Achievements
 Current status
 Future challenges

10. COUNTER
Codes of Practice
 Definitions of terms used
 Specifications for Usage Reports
 What they should include
 What they should look like
 How and when they should be delivered
 Data processing guidelines
 Auditing
 Compliance
 Maintenance and development of the Code
of Practice
 Governance of COUNTER

11. COUNTER: current Codes of
Practice
1) Journals and databases
 Release 1 Code of Practice launched January 2003
 Release 2 published April 2005 replacing Release 1 in January
2006
 Now a widely adopted standard by publishers and librarians
 60 vendors now compliant
 10000+ journals now covered
 Librarians use it in collection development decisions
 Publishers use it in marketing to prove ‘value’
2) Books and reference works
 Release 1 Code of Practice launched March 2006
 6 vendors now compliant
 Relevant usage metrics less clear than for journals
 Different issues than for journals

Direct comparisons between books less relevant

Understanding how different categories of book are used is more
relevant

12. Journal and Database Code of
Practice
Usage Reports
 Journal Report 1
 Full text article requests by month and journal
 Journal Report 2
 Turnaways by month and journal
 Database Report 1
 Total searches and sessions by month and database
 Database Report 2
 Turnaways by month and database
 Database Report 3
 Searches and sessions by month and service

13. Code of Practice for books
 Book Report 1
 Number of successful requests by month and title
 Book Report 2
 Number of successful section requests by month and title
 Book Report 3
 Turnaways by month and title
 Book Report 4
 Turnaways by month and service
 Book Report 5
 Total searches and sessions by month and title
 Book Report 6
 Total searches and sessions by month and service

14. Journal Report 1
Full text article requests by journal
Html and PDF totals
reported separately

15. COUNTER Audit
 Independent audit required within 18 months of compliance, and
annually thereafter
 Audit is online, using scripts provided in the Code of Practice
 Auditor can be:
 Any Chartered Accountant
 Another COUNTER-approved auditor
 ABCE is the first COUNTER-approved auditor
 Industry-owned
 Not-for-profit
 Independent and impartial
 Part of ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations)
 Providing website traffic audits for over 150 companies and certifying over
1400 domains
 Have successfully completed test audits on COUNTER usage reports

16. ABCE Audit fees
FEES CHARGEABLE Standard Fee COUNTER Members
Year 1 Year 2 Year 1 Year 2
[A] Registration Fee £1,556 £612
[B] Annual Subscription £852 £852 £621 £621
Journal Report 1 £1,480 £1,480 £1,480 £1,480
Journal Report 2 £740 £740 £740 £740
Database Report 1 £1,110 £1,110 £1,110 £1,110
Database Report 2 £740 £740 £740 £740
Database Report 3 £370 £370 £370 £370
Total cost of Journal Report 1 audit £3,888 £2,332 £2,713 £2,101

17. ABCE audit fees
 Year 1 (first audit)
 £2,500
 Includes 1.5 man-days pre audit consultancy as well as 1.5 man-days audit

Max 20 million records (add 0.5 man-days per 10 million or part thereof)

Max 50 reports (add 0.5 man-days per 50 reports or part thereof)

Assumes 1 data source for all reported numbers, in correct format,
delivered to agreed timescale
 Ongoing support (technical, administrative & marketing)
 Reduced by £250 for COUNTER members
 Year 2 (and ongoing per audit)
 £1,500
 Includes 1.5 man-days audit
 Max 20 million records (add 0.5 man-days per 10 million or part thereof)

Max 50 reports (add 0.5 man-days per 50 reports or part thereof)

Assumes 1 data source for all reported numbers, in correct format,
delivered to agreed timescale
 Ongoing support (technical, administrative & marketing)

At ABCE’s normal daily consultancy rate

18. COUNTER: deriving metrics from
Journal Report 1
 Local metrics
 For libraries and library consortia
 At journal, collection and publisher level
 To compare the cost-effectiveness of journal subscriptions
 To assess the value of Big Deals
 Global metrics
 For authors, funding agencies, libraries and publishers
 At journal, collection and publisher level
 To compare quality and value

19. COUNTER: ‘local’ metrics
 JISC (UK Joint Information Systems Committee)
 Funded by UK higher education funding councils
 Supports higher education in the use of information and
communications technologies

Access to information and communication resources

Advice on creation and preservation of digital archives

Implications of using ICT

Network services and support

Research to develop innovative solutions
 National overview of online journal usage
 Develop a reliable, widely applicable methodology
 Use COUNTER Journal Report 1 ‘article full-text requests’

20. Local metrics: an example
 COUNTER data was analysed in relation to:
 usage range
 Price band
 Subject category
 Metrics derived from this analysis
 Trend in number of full-text article downloads
 Full text article requests per title
 Full text article requests per publisher package
 Full text article requests per FTE user
 Most requested titles
 Usage of subscribed vs.. unsubscribed titles
 Cost per full-text article downloads
 Cost per FTE user
 Summary report available at:
www.ebase.uce.ac.uk/projects/NESLi2.htm

21. Local metrics: an example
 Growth in full-text article downloads
 Publisher A: 12%- 208%
 Publisher B: 12%- 59%
 Publisher C: 23%- 154%
 Publisher D: 22%- 81%
 Cost per full-text article download
 Publisher A: £0.97- £5.26
 Publisher B: £0.70 - £2.91
 Publisher C: £0.80 - £3.29
 Publisher D: £0.45 - £2.26

22. COUNTER: ‘global’ metrics
 Impact Factor
 Well-established, easily understood and accepted
 Endorsed by funding agencies and researchers
 Does not cover all fields of scholarship
 Reflects value of journals to researchers
 Over-emphasis on IF distorts the behaviour of authors
 Over-used, mis-used and over-interpreted
 Usage Factor
 Usage-based alternative perspective
 Would cover all online journals
 Would reflect value of journals to all categories of user
 Would be easy to understood

23. Global metrics: UKSG Project
 Assess the feasibility of developing and implementing journal
Usage Factors
 Level of support from author, librarian and publisher communities
 Data from which UF would be derived

COUNTER Journal Report 1?
 Article numbers

Process for consolidation, calculation and reporting of UFs
 Factors in the calculation

Level of reporting

Total usage

Articles
 Report in April 2007
 Just completed set of 29 interviews with industry leaders
 Wider online survey will take place in February 2007

24. UKSG Project: feedback
 Are the COUNTER usage statistics sufficiently robust?
 Frustration at lack of comparable, quantitative data on journals
 Should items covered by restricted to articles?
 Many journals still have significant usage in print
 Diversity of views on the factors in the calculation
 Specified usage period
 Specified publication period
 Usage data is more susceptible to manipulation
 Will the journal be a meaningful concept in the future?
 Two measures with different limitations are better than one, and UF will
be derived from a set of credible, understandable data
 Usage data will be used as a measure of value, whether publishers like
it or not

25. Current issues
 Interface effects on usage statistics
 E.g. downloading HTML and PDF of the same article in one session
 COUNTER has tested data filter solutions, but what does the
duplicate downloading signify?
 Reporting separately purchasable digital archive
usage
 Currently all usage for a journal is usually reported together
 Separately purchasable archives mean we need separate reports
for archival content, or a year of publication breakdown of usage
 Usage in Institutional Repositories
 Growth in Institutional Repository (IR) content
 Need for credible IR usage statistics
 IR usage statistics already being collected, but no standards
 SUSHI
 Improving consortial usage reports
 Current usage reports inadequate
 New reports in XML format

26. Reporting separately purchasable digital
archive usage
 Increasingly requested by librarians
 Interim solution
 Journal Report 1a:Number of Successful Full-Text Article
Requests from an Archive by Month and Journal
 Optional additional usage report
 Longer-term solution
 Journals Report 1a?
 Include year-of-publication data in JR1?

27. SUSHI
 Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative
(SUSHI)
 No mechanism yet for automatically retrieving, combining,
and storing COUNTER usage data from different sources
 NISO-sponsored XML-based SUSHI aims to provide a
means to do just this, via a standard model for machine to
machine automation of statistics harvesting.
 COUNTER and NISO have signed an agreement to work
together on the development of SUSHI. More details of
SUSHI can be found at:-
http://www.niso.org/committees/SUSHI/SUSHI_comm.html

28. Future challenges
 Improving/extending the Codes of Practice
 Reliability ( audit, federated searches, prefetching)
 Usability (number of compliant vendors, XML format,
additional usage reports)
 Additional data (year of publication, article level reports)
 Categories of content (Institutional Repository content)
 Deriving metrics from the Codes of Practice
 Journals (cost per use, Usage Factor)
 Databases?
 Books?

29. Next steps…..
 Release 3 of Code of Practice for
Journals/Databases
 Features: prioritisation on basis of demand and practicality
 Process: consultation via focus groups,etc; publication of
draft CoP
 Release 2 of Code of Practice for Books
 Review R1 in practice
 Other categories of content ( eg Institutional
Repositories)
 Metrics derived from the COUNTER usage statistics
 Cost per use
 Usage Factor

30. COUNTER Membership
 Member Categories and Annual
Fees (2007)
 Publishers/intermediaries: £530
 Library Consortia: £355
 Libraries: £265
 Industry organization: £265
 Library affiliate: £106 (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

31. http://www.projectcounter.orghttp://www.projectcounter.org
Apply for COUNTER
membership
Apply for COUNTER
membership

32. For more information……….
http://www.projectcounter.org
Thank you!
Peter Shepherd, COUNTER
pshepherd@projectcounter.org