COUNTER 5 is in our Roadmap for implementation in the 2018 pipeline. Byron Russell talked to Lorraine Estelle, COUNTER Project Director, to find out more about the updated industry-standard statistical reporting tool for librarians everywhere.
The team at Project COUNTER felt that they needed to make the COUNTER code of practice far more accessible, and have now developed a new website which presents user-friendly guides for libraries on how to best use reports, and – very importantly – a guide for publishers to aid those who are not fully compliant yet, and those who are not yet compliant at all. Details are available at https://www.projectcounter.org/counter-code-practice-release-5-update/
The self-help guides consist of technical guides and guides to the reports themselves. Mitchell Dunkley, a Principal Information Assistant for De Montfort University, wrote the three library guides on Database Reports, Journal Reports, and Book Reports which are available from https://www.projectcounter.org/guides
The team are now building a fully automated testing service. This has been generously funded with a contribution from the EBSCO Foundation. It will be available before the end of this year, so publishers and other vendors can test their own COUNTER reports and basically self-audit. Ingenta has been audited and of course is fully compliant, so if you host with us there is nothing you need to do!
The COUNTER team ran a survey last year and realised there was a huge demand for webinar-based training. Ingenta ran a webinar with Lorraine, of course; if you would like to see it, simply watch the full webinar recording on our YouTube Channel
The COUNTER team have also created a new registry of approved publishers and vendors, with SUSHI login details where applicable, as compliance was a major issue that came out of our 2015 survey. For publishers who are COUNTER members they now have a forum which should help, providing quick answers to frequently asked questions.
One of these concerns the compliance “grace period” post-release, which will actually be eighteen months, so stretching into 2019. Lorraine tells me this will be the last ever release, by the way; after COUNTER 5, the team will move to a policy of continuous small improvements and developments, but no new releases.
For much more detailed information on Counter 5, please contact:
Lorraine Estelle
lorraine.estelle@counterusage.org
https://www.projectcounter.org/about/counter-for-publishers-vendors/