a publisher’s perspective on counter: motivation, compliance, outcomes

A Publisher’s Perspective on COUNTER:motivation, compliance, outcomes

Programme

• RSC as a publisher

• Web statistics - inc. COUNTER– Motivation– Compliance– Outcomes– Problems/Challenges– Future

Introduction

• Royal Society of Chemistry– 45,000 Members Worldwide

• RSC Publishing– 25 Journals

• >14000 Submissions per year• >5400 Published articles per year

– 6 Databases– Book programme - 30-50 books p.a.

Online publishing

• Journals online since 1997– PDF/HTML articles– Archive (1841-1996)– Reference linking/Forward citations – Self-hosted and hosted at OCLC

• Online access– Individuals– Institutions/Companies– Consortia/Multisites

Speed of publication

Around the world in 80 days with RSC journals

Top quality research articles delivered….

From Submission to Publication!

Motivation for reliable web metrics - 1

• Need data for various business purposes– General web site accesses– Ease of access to content

• Referrals• Navigation

– Journal accesses– Access denials/turnaways– Promotion


• Contractual requirements• Better understanding of customer’s use of web

site• New pricing models• New products• Repurposing – slicing & dicing• New ways to access data

– Eg. Delivery of HTML– Cf. Biochem. Socs.


• Web Metrics - Customers– Librarians – Consortium organisers– Publisher– Authors– Journal Owners

Compliance

• Historical– 1st statistics system – July 2000– Log file analysis– Accesses by journal– Accesses by IP address– Segmented by Journal and year of article publication– Delivered the raw data to article level – Select data – month/several months/years

• Non-COUNTER compliant!– Recorded multiple accesses

Multiple accessesDate Of Access Journal Year Article ID

28/03/2002 21:27 Perkin Transactions 1 2002 b202398a




01/04/2002 19:57 Chemical Communications 2002 b110370a

01/04/2002 19:57 Chemical Communications 2002 b110370a

02/04/2002 20:48 Perkin Transactions 1 2001 b008317h

03/04/2002 19:22 Perkin Transactions 1 2001 b105420c

03/04/2002 19:22 Perkin Transactions 1 2001 b105420c

08/04/2002 16:56 Chemical Communications 2001 b007679l








Log

file

anal

ysis

Customer journal accesses - 2003

Journal 2000 2001 2002 2003 Grand Total

Annual Reports Section "A" (Inorganic Chemistry) 1 5 4 10

Annual Reports Section "B" (Organic Chemistry) 2 7 53 3 65

Annual Reports Section "C" (Physical Chemistry) 2 13 2 17

Chem Society Reviews 7 84 65 218 374

Chemical Communications 64 346 444 1541 2395

CrystEngComm 1 23 50 74

Dalton Transactions 4 103 145 519 771

Faraday Discussions 2 9 85 96

Geochemical Transactions 6 6

Green Chemistry 4 15 25 10 54

Journal of Materials Chemistry 71 94 182 399 746

Lab On a Chip 9 1 5 15

Natural Product Reports 3 35 68 81 187

New Journal of Chemistry 13 68 58 80 219

Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry 495 495

Perkin Transactions 1 10 224 121 355

Perkin Transactions 2 2 76 115 193

Photochemical & Biological Sciences 37 14 51

PhysChemComm 12 12

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 21 228 155 170 574

The Analyst 21 154 146 128 449

Grand Total 227 1463 1666 3802 7233

Present system

• Launched January 2005

• Driven by authentication server– Session based statistics– Accesses by journal– Segmented by Journal– COUNTER Version 1 – JR1 report

• COUNTER compliant – May 2005!– www.projectcounter.org/articles.html

Version 2 release

• Needed to be Version 2 compliant by March 2006

• Needed other web site accesses– TOC– Searches– PDF/HTML split

• Further development of the system required• Costs of internal development/maintenance vs.

outsourcing

• Collaboration between Macmillan Publishing Services and IBM SurfAid

• Guarantee COUNTER compliance to most recent Code of Practice

• Presently working for:– ACS – IEEE– Nature Publishing Group– Palgrave Macmillan

• ScholarlyStats – new service for librarians

SurfAid home page

COUNTER – Journal Report 1


Page Type

Full-text Total Requests

Full-text HTML Requests

Full-text PDF Requests

Abstracts

Table of Contents

Full-text HTML Turnaways

Full-text PDF Turnaways

Problems/Challenges

• Publisher data on customers– Never perfect!– Multiple records for single customer– Amalgamation of data for single customer

• Maintenance aspects - overheads– Registration/updating on all publisher sites– Analysing data - cost benefit

Problems/Challenges

• Are librarians/publishers counting all accesses?– Access via Intermediaries

• SwetsWise / EBSCOhost® EJS / Athens/Shibboleth?

– Cached content

• What could be counted?– Reference links – included in/linked to HTML – Supplementary data– Forward links

• Future delivery requirements

Counter stats delivery –Librarian requirements

• COUNTER statistics in XML format• COUNTER statistics by IP address• COUNTER stats at different levels

Multi-country consortium organiser

Country 2 Country 1 Country 3

Institution 2 Institution 1 Institution 3

Levels

1

2

3

Long-term provision of statistics

• Who?– Publishers– Librarians, via links servers or web log

analysis– Trusted 3rd party

In summary…..

• Simple philosophy– Way of generating and providing web metrics in a

reliable and consistent way

• Defines basic set of data to be reported• Brings “trust” to an evolving area• May be crucial for possible future journal and

article pricing models

Final thoughts…….

• Access statistics are here to stay• COUNTER forces comparability of statistics• COUNTER CoP will continue to evolve• Services will evolve to help libraries and

publishers cope with the changes• Publishers and librarians have a need to

see/share the full access picture• RSC will be Counter 2 Compliant by early

January 2006

A Publisher’s Perspective on COUNTER:motivation, compliance, outcomes

Mike HannantPublishing Services [email protected]

a publisher’s perspective on counter: motivation, compliance, outcomes

Documents

geochemical transactions

customer journal accesses

reliable web metrics

publisher web statistics

log file analysis accesses

rsc journals

online publishing journals

year of article publication