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COUNTER Release 5 Code of Practice
Frequently Asked Questions
What is COUNTER?
COUNTER provides the Code of Practice that enables publishers and vendors to report usage of their electronic resources in a consistent way. This enables libraries to compare data received from different publishers and vendors.
What is the COUNTER Release 5 Code of Practice? Why was it necessary?
Publishing and technology have changed considerably since the last Code of Practice was published in 2012 and new and revised usage metrics allow for a better measure of online user behavior. R5 has been developed to reduce ambiguity, and provide consistency and comparability of usage reporting.
What are the main differences between COUNTER Release 4 and Release 5?
The most significant difference is the reduction in the number of reports and usage metrics. This allows for clarity and consistency across reports removing some of the ambiguity around usage reporting.
Will Release 5 bring anything new to usage reporting?
R5 will bring increased granularity as well as flexibility with a large data repository, rather than the standard and optional reports under R4. To allow for this release to support the long term, R5 introduces attributes that can be associated with multiple metrics allowing to drill down or roll up reporting with ease. The following attributes are included under R5 to create additional classification and ease of summarization including Access Type, Access Method, Data Type, Section Type and YOP (Year of Publication).
For more on the new metrics under R5, please see Section 1.2 Changes from COUNTER Release 4 from ProjectCOUNTER.
Will I be able to see these new metrics for historical usage data?
Unfortunately, no. COUNTER mandates these changes from January 2019 forward and this required changes to the way usage is tracked and cannot be applied retroactively.
How long can I still access Release 4 Usage Reports?
SAGE will continue to host R4 reporting through at least April 2019, as required by COUNTER.
How will I know which report to run?
The most significant change to usage reporting under R5 is that you are not limited by standardized, set reports. For translation to R4 Journals Usage Reports to R5, see the Section 13.3 Transitioning from COUNTER R4 to R5 guide from Project COUNTER.
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COUNTER R4 report |
COUNTER R5 report/status |
Comments |
|---|---|---|
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Book Report 1: Number of Successful Title Requests by Month and Title |
Book Title Report 1: Usage by Month and Book |
The unique_item_investigations will provide total activity by book and offers a way to compare usage from sites delivering eBooks as a single document to sites delivering usage by section. |
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Book Report 2: Number of Successful Section Requests by Month and Title |
Book Title Report 1: Usage by Month and Book |
The unique_item_investigations will provide total activity by book and offers a way to compare usage from sites delivering eBooks as a single document to sites delivering usage by section. |
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Expanded Title Report: Activity by Month and Title |
Analysis by section type can be obtained on demand from the generic Title Report by limiting to Books and selecting option to show usage broken down by section type. |
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Book Report 3: Access Denied to Content Items by Month, Title and Category |
Book Title Report 2: Access Denied by Month and Book |
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Book Report 4: Access Denied to Content items by Month, Platform and Category |
Platform Report 1: Usage by Month and Platform |
Access denied statistics will be included in the standard platform report. |
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Book Report 5: Total Searches by Month and Title |
Eliminated (no equivalent) |
For most platforms, attempting to track searches by titles is not reasonable since all titles are included in most searches. |
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Consortium Report 1: Number of successful full-text journal article or book chapter requests by month and title |
Eliminated |
Due to their size creating and consuming consortium reports is not practical and thus consortium reports have been eliminated. Instead of a single consortium report, consortium should use SUSHI to harvest individual reports for each member. |
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Database Report 1: Total Searches, Result Clicks and Record Views by Month and Database |
Database Report 1: Usage by Month and Database/Collection |
Result Clicks and Record Views have been replaced by unique_item_investigations. Metrics for regular searches remains unchanged, federated and automated searches are now reported separately. Report also includes access denied and full text metrics. |
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Database Report 2: Access Denied by Month, Database and Category |
Database Report 2: Access Denied by Month and Database/Collection |
Report renamed and updated metric types used |
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Journal Report 1: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal |
Journal Title Report 1: Usage by Month and Journal |
Metrics ft_total, ft_html and ft_pdf have been replaced by and items_requested; unique_item_requests. New metrics include unique_item_investigations. Access denied statistics also included. |
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Journal Report 1 GOA: Number of Successful Gold Open Access Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal |
Journal Title Report 1: Usage by Month and Journal |
Title Report JTR1 breaks out usage by Access_Type with possible values of OA_Gold, OA_Green, Other_Free_to_Read and Controlled. |
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Journal Report 1a: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests from an Archive by Month and Journal |
Journal Title Report 1: Usage by Month and Journal |
Title Report JTR1 breaks out usage by IsArchive; therefore, usage of items in an archive will have IsArchive set to “Y”. |
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Journal Report 2: Access Denied to Full-Text Articles by Month, Journal and Category |
Journal Title Report 2: Access Denied by Month and Journal |
Title Report JTR2 includes access denied metrics. |
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Journal Report 3: Number of Successful Item Requests by Month, Journal and Page-type |
Expanded Title Report: Activity by Month and Title |
Additional optional metric types can be included in this report. |
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Journal Report 3 Mobile: Number of Successful Item Requests by Month, Journal and Page-type for usage on a mobile device |
Eliminated (no equivalent) |
Capturing usage by mobile devices is less relevant with the responsive design of most sites. The variety of “mobile” devices also make it difficult to categorize given today’s smartphones have screen resolutions that exceed those of some desktops. |
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Journal Report 4: Total Searches Run By Month and Collection |
Database Report 1: Usage by Month and Database/Collection |
To the extent that a journal collection is organized for searching as a discrete collection (rare), usage would be reported in a Database Report DR1. |
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Journal Report 5: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Year-of-Publication (YOP) and Journal |
Expanded Title Report: Usage by Month and Title |
The Expanded Title Report includes to the option to show usage broken down by YOP and can be limited to Data_Type of Journal. |
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Multimedia Report 1: Number of Successful Full Multimedia Content Unit Requests by Month and Collection |
Database Report 1: Usage by Month and Database/Collection |
Multimedia usage, where multimedia is packaged and accessed as separate collections, would be reported using a Database Report DR1 report. |
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Platform Report 1: Total Searches, Result Clicks and Record Views by Month and Platform |
Platform Report 1: Usage by Month and Platform |
The new PR1 provides usage for additional metric types for searches, requests and access denied. |
What are the standard reports under COUNTER 5?
Release 4 provided 36 reports, whether optional or standard. COUNTER 5 reports are grouped by reporting level, with standard and expanded reports at each level. Expanded reports allow for the customization of reports through the newly added data attributes such as data type and access type.
For more information on the R5 reports types please see COUNTER Release 5 Draft Code of Practice FAQs from Project COUNTER.
I see that Consortia Reporting is not currently available under Release 5, what should I do?
Separate consortium reports are not currently available under R5. Per COUNTER: The development of this tool has taken longer than we would like. We have been waiting for a content providers working R5 SUSHI server for testing. This is now underway, and we should be able to update on progress shortly.
In the meantime, consortium administrators are able to access the usage statistics for individual consortium member institutions, from a single login, using the same user id and password.
Will turnaways change under Release 5?
No. Turnaways are registered the dame as R4: when a user attempts to access content but has not access entitlement to the content, the customer is redirected to the abstract and a turnaway is recorded.
How have the metrics changed?
COUNTER has reduced the number of metrics from Release 4 for consistency and clarity across reports. Investigations and Requests are two metric types that record usage under R5, with Requests as a subset of Investigations. An Investigation is when a user performs any action in relation to a content item, while a request is the actual viewing or download of the full content item.
The following chart will show the R4 Report and R5 equivalent metrics. R5 Standard views are analogous to the R4 reports for comparison year on year.
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R4 Report |
R4 metric |
R5 equivalent |
|---|---|---|
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BR1 |
Full-text requests (at the book level) |
Unique_Title_Requests AND Data_Type=Book AND Section_Type=Book |
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BR2 |
Full-text requests (at the chapter/section level) |
Total_Item_Requests AND Data_Type=Book AND Section_Type=Chapter|Section |
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BR3 |
Access denied – concurrent/simultaneous user limit exceeded |
Limit_Exceeded AND Data_Type=Book |
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Access denied – content item not licensed |
No_License AND Data_Type=Book |
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DB1 |
Regular searches |
Searches_Regular |
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Searches – federated and automated |
SUM (Searches_Automated, Searches_Federated) |
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Result clicks |
Total_Item_Investigations attributed to the database |
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Record views |
Total_Item_Investigations attributed to the database. (Note that resulting result click and record view counts will be the same. Librarians should use one or the other and not add them up.) |
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DB2 |
Access denied – concurrent/simultaneous user limit exceeded |
Limit_Exceeded AND Data_Type=Database |
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Access denied – content item not license |
No_License AND Data_Type=Database |
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JR1 |
Full-text requests |
Total_Item_Requests AND Data_Type=Journal |
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HTML requests |
Leave blank unless format of HTML and PDF are also logged in which case: Total_Item_Requests AND Data_Type=Journal AND Format=HTML |
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PDF requests |
Leave blank unless format of HTML and PDF are also logged in which case: Total_Item_Requests AND Data_Type=Journal AND Format=PDF |
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JR2 |
Access denied – concurrent/simultaneous user limit exceeded |
Limit_Exceeded AND Data_Type=Journal |
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Access denied—content item not licensed |
No_License AND Data_Type=Journal |
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JR5 |
Full-text requests (by year of publications) |
Total_Item_Requests AND Data_Type=Journal, pivot on YOP |
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PR1 |
Regular searches |
Searches_Platform |
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Searches – federated and automated |
Leave blank (Searches performed on the platform via federated and automated searching are included in Searches_Platform). |
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Result clicks |
SUM (Total_Item_Investigations attributed to the databases) |
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Record views |
SUM (Total_Item_Investigations attributed to the databases). |
Please note that the distinction between HTML views and PDF downloads has become defunct under Release 5.
How will SUSHI Reporting be effected under the R5 changes?
The COUNTER_SUSHI API specification allows report responses to be customized to the caller’s needs using report filters and report attributes. For Standard Views, these filters and attributes are implicit. For the Master Reports, the filters and attributes will be explicitly included as parameters on the COUNTER_SUSHI request.
Refer to Section 3.3.8 and the COUNTER_SUSHI API Specification for the list of filters and attributes supported by the various COUNTER reports.
For more information on the COUNTER Release 5 Code of Practice, please refer to these additional resources published by Project COUNTER: