COUNTER and SUSHI: Evolving standards to meet evolving needs

COUNTER and SUSHI: Evolving standards to meet evolving needs

ALCTS CE Electronic Resources Interest GroupJanuary 21, 2012

Oliver PeschChief Strategist, E-ResourcesEBSCO Information Services

Overview• What’s changed since 2001• How Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice

addresses these changes• Facilitating implementation• Ensuring compliance through a more robust audit• Timing

2001• Online collections becoming relevant• Focus was on e-journals and databases• Data accessed at the host site or via a gateway• Usage reports were human readable• COUNTER came about as a result of the need for

credible, comparable and consistent statistics

2012• Online takes up most of the collection budget• Collections expanded from e-journals and

databases to e-books, multi-media• Discovery layers and federated searches are

prevalent• Mobile devices growing in capability and

popularity• With a multitude of hosts retrieval of statistics

needs to be automated• ERMs and other software allows usage to be

consolidated and combined with other data for analysis

COUNTER Code of Practice: Release 4

Addressing…• New formats• New devices used for access• New access technologies• Need for automation• Need for machine processing

Single Code of Practice

One Code of Practice • Covers books, databases, journals and

multimedia collections• Easier to manage for COUNTER• Easier to manage for content providers –

particularly those offering multiple resource types.

New Required ReportsMultimedia Report 1• Reports on use of items in multimedia collections• Applies to platforms like ArtStorConsortium Report 3• The multimedia report for consortiaJournal Report 5• Usage of journal articles broken out by year of

publication• No longer optional

New Data ElementsDOI and Proprietary Identifier• Improves identification of items listed in the

reports• Improves matching usage to the correct items in

a knowledge base• Involves coordination with KBART so the same

identifier is on both the vendor’s Title List and their COUNTER report

• Applies to most COUNTER reports

New Data ElementsInstitutional Identifier • Utilizes the NISO I2 as the standard identifier for

the institution (being implemented as ISNI for organizations)

• Improves comparative analysis– particularly for usage processed by consortium

• Applies to all reports

New Data Elements

New Metric TypesGold Open Access• Covers articles accessible without subscription• Included as a separate count in Journal Report

1and Journal Report 1a

New Metric TypesResult Clicks and Record Views• Result Click counts each time a user clicked a link

from the search result to the detailed view, a link resolver, etc.

• Record View counts the abstract/detailed records explicitly viewed from the database

• Both indicate an explicit expression of interest in the result

• Provides a more direct measure of database usage, in particular for A&I databases

• Applies to Database Reports 1 and 3

New Metric TypesAccess Denied: content item not licensed• In addition to Turnaway s (simultaneous user limit)• Records a user’s attempt to access full text for

which their institution does not have a subscription• Applies to “Access Denied” reports:

o Journal Report 2o Database Report 2o Book Reports 3 and 4

• Useful input for collection development

Metric Types RemovedSessions• Federated Search and Discovery products have

made “Sessions” an unreliable measure of use• Reports affected:

o Database Report 1o Database Report 3o Consortium Report 2

COUNTER and SUSHI XML Schemas

Changes resulting from the new Code of Practice

COUNTER and SUSHI XML Schemas

COUNTER Schema• Minor changes only• ItemIdentifier, ItemPublisher now optional

elements• PubYr attribute ( used by Journal Report 5) now

defined as a year.• PubYrFrom and PubYrTo attributes added to allow

Journal Report 5 to report ranges of years.

COUNTER and SUSHI XML Schemas

COUNTER Enumeration Schema• Contains the controlled vocabulary for elements

like ItemDataType, Category, MetricType, etc.• Added new values as required by the new and

updated reports

COUNTER and SUSHI XML Schemas

SUSHI Schema• No changes required

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile

Facilitating adoption of SUSHI

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileWhy• SUSHI and COUNTER tend to be abstract• Abstraction leaves the opportunity for concepts to

be interpreted differently• Different interpretations leads to inconsistencies• Examples:

o Different authentication methods that require custom developmento Wrong capitalization on controlled data valueso Including “Totals” in the XMLo Including invalid ISSNs (e.g. “N/A”)

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileAuthentication for SUSHI Client• IP and use of requester and customer IDs allowed• Use of SOAP extensions not allowed

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileReport Names• Must exactly match the value in the “Name”

column on the SUSHI Reports RegistryDate Ranges for SUSHI Request• Format must by yyyy-mm-dd• Begin date must be first of the month• End date must be last day of the month• End date must be later than begin date

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileSUSHI Exceptions• Standard error numbers must be used for

standard error conditions (see Table 17 in the SUSHI standard)

SUSHI Server Registry• SUSHI Server must be registered on SUSHI Server

Registry

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileData to Return in the COUNTER Report• Only the months of usage asked for• Include exception if some or all usage not

available• Only include items appropriate to the report (e.g.

don’t return book usage in a Journal Report)• Do not include totals for the report or an item

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileData Elements Values• Use registered values with proper casing for

enumerated values (Item Data Type, Category, Metric Type, etc.)

• Use values appropriate for the report

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileDesigned for use by implementers• Prescriptive in nature• Lots of tables and charts

COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation ProfileDesigned for use by implementers• Prescriptive in nature• Lots of tables and charts

COUNTER AuditMonitoring compliance

COUNTER Audit• SUSHI and COUNTER XML will receive more focus

in the audit• COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile should

serve as a guide for auditors• Auditors will be expected to use automation to

reduce the cost of the audit

TimingTrial use, comments and final implementation

TimingJanuary 20, 2012• Last day for comments on the draft of release 4 of

COUNTER Code of Practice and the COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile

March/April 2012• Final publication of Release 4 of COUNTER CoP

and the COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile December 31, 2013• Deadline for compliance with Release 4 of the

COUNTER CoP

ReferencesCOUNTER CoP R4 http://www.projectcounter.org/code_practice.ht

mlCOUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile

http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?document_id=7639&wg_abbrev=sushimaintenance

COUNTER Schema Date Element Values

http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/values_R4

KBART http://www.uksg.org/kbartNISO SUSHI website

http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi

SUSHI Reports Registry

http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/reports_R4/

SUSHI Server Registry

https://sites.google.com/site/sushiserverregistry/ Thank you