- Become a COUNTER member now

If you work within a library or company that has anything to do with the online delivery of published information, then your organization should certainly become a member of Project COUNTER.  Libraries, consortia, publishers, intermediaries, and e-journal and e-book vendors have a vested interest in ensuring the accuracy and usability of usage data.  We are writing to ask for your support for Project COUNTER so that we can continue to develop the very best in community-agreed usage reports and tools for understanding usage.

- Before COUNTER

Let us remind you of the bad old days before Project COUNTER was established.  Publisher platforms would count any number of different user behaviors as 'usage' and would report them in a variety of different formats, such as 'double clicks' counted twice for some and not for others.  Usage reports were not always provided and, where they were, the numbers could not be compared against each other.  There was no way to tell the respective usage of different online information products nor to implement in any meaningful way such concepts as 'cost per use', which require comparable usage data.

Now, thanks to COUNTER, there is a universally agreed standard Code of Practice for usage reports.  This ensures that all compliant publisher platforms count the same units of usage, apply the same data filters, and report usage in an agreed format.  There are now over 60 vendors providing COUNTER compliant usage reports for over 9000 full-text journals, as well as for a growing number of databases.

- COUNTER - 5 years on

Since the launch of the first COUNTER Code of Practice in 2002, libraries around the world have been able to compare and contrast the usage for different journals and databases across different subjects from different publishers.  A new discipline of usage bibliometrics has developed and a great deal of work is underway to try to establish 'value metrics' associated with usage, in which the COUNTER compliant statistics play an increasingly important role.

New reports have been developed for online book and reference work vendors and recommendations have been made for reports for legacy content.  Training on interpreting usage reports has been provided at several workshops and this initiative will be extended to North America in 2007.  COUNTER does more than just set the standards for usage reports; we are cooperating with a number of organizations to develop a range of usage-related research and services.  In 2006 COUNTER carried out research, sponsored by JISC, on the effects of publisher platforms on usage and we are currently collaborating with UKSG on the possible development of a new Usage Factor metric.  COUNTER has also worked with NISO on SUSHI (Standardised Usage Harvesting Initiative) to develop a protocol to facilitate the automated harvesting and consolidation of usage statistics from different vendors. The SUSHI protocol has been available in draft form since mid-2006 and is already being implemented by vendors.

Richard Gedye, Chair of COUNTER, who has been a leader in the movement to improve the quality of vendor usage statistics for many years, says: 'Since its genesis in 2002, COUNTER has transformed the quality of online usage statistics by setting standards that are not only practical to implement but also provide useful information on how online products are being used.  With a steadily growing number of compliant vendors, COUNTER has also become central to the discussion on the value of online journals and databases.  Further enhancements to the Codes of Practice are required and planned.  The ongoing support of the publisher, librarian and intermediary communities as members of COUNTER is much appreciated.'

- Future objectives

In five short years, COUNTER has greatly improved the reliability and usability of online vendor usage statistics.  There is still, however, much for us to do, not only to help vendors further improve their usage reports and to help librarians to make sense of them, but also to keep COUNTER up to date with changes in the online delivery of information.  Our future objectives fall into three broad categories.  First, to improve the reliability of the core COUNTER data and extend scope of the Code of Practice beyond journals, databases and books.  Second, to continue to increase the number of COUNTER compliant vendors.  Third, to work with organizations such as NISO and UKSG to facilitate the implementation of COUNTER and develop metrics based on the COUNTER data that are of practical value to both librarians and vendors.

However, we can only achieve any of this with the support of our membership.

Become a member of Project COUNTER now and support this important work. You will be in very distinguished company - a full list of current COUNTER members is available on our website at http://www.projectcounter.org/members.html


- Benefits of COUNTER membership include:

*       COUNTER is owned by its members, who can influence the direction of COUNTER not only by their votes at the Annual General Meeting, but also in other ways, such as participation in member surveys and focus groups
*       Regular bulletins on the progress of COUNTER
*       Advice on the implementation of COUNTER
*       For vendors, a discounted price for the annual audit


The following annual membership rates apply for 2007:

Publisher £530 / $800
Intermediary £530 / $800
Library £265 / $400
Library Consortium £355 / $530
Industry Organization £265 / $400
Library Affiliate £106 / $160

To become a member of COUNTER simply complete the online application form here: http://www.projectcounter.org/member.html

For more information, please contact:
Peter Shepherd
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http://www.projectcounter.org