science

Project COUNTER

Project COUNTER is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Project COUNTER rather than just read about it. In short: Project COUNTER, or simply COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources), is an international non-profit membership organization of libraries, publishers, and vendors. The organization continually develops a standard, the Code of Practice, designed to count the usage of library electronic resources: journals, databases, books, reference works, and multimedia databases.

Key takeaways

Project COUNTER belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Project COUNTER to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Project COUNTER from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Project COUNTER, or simply COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources), is an international non-profit membership organization of libraries, publishers, and vendors. The organization continually develops a standard, the Code of Practice, designed to count the usage of library electronic resources: journals, databases, books, reference works, and multimedia databases.

Purpose Formed in 2003, COUNTER's main function is to provide the Code of Practice. COUNTER maintains a list of compliant vendors of the Code of Practice. COUNTER sets and maintains the standard known as the Code of Practice. COUNTER has developed the standard to be used with the ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2014 protocol, called SUSHI, to retrieve usage data quickly.

History In 2002, publishers and librarians approached usage statistics from very different perspectives. Some publishers, those who were the very first to support COUNTER, understood the potential benefits to their industry of providing usage statistics to an agreed standard; others saw it as an unnecessary extra cost. On the library side there was also a tension between those librarians who wanted a set of practical, implementable usage reports, while others wanted a whole range of very detailed usage data that publishers were unlikely to provide. There were arguments on both sides, but a consensus was reached, resulting in the launch of Project COUNTER in 2003. Its mission is to develop standards for the recording and reporting of the usage of online publications. Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Journals and Databases was published in 2003 and widely implemented by vendors, who proceeded to make the COUNTER Usage Reports available on their websites to their customers. As the number of COUNTER-compliant vendors expanded, the manual downloading of the COUNTER usage reports from a large and growing number of vendor websites became increasingly time-consuming and ultimately a barrier to libraries making effective use of the COUNTER reports. COUNTER, having defined the protocols for the recording and reporting of online journal and database usage, lacked a method for the routine delivery of large volumes of usage data. By the time Release 2 of the COUNTER Code of Practice was published in 2005, there were almost 100 COUNTER-compliant vendors, providing COUNTER reports for over 15,000 journals, as well as for databases and books. An automated way of downloading and consolidating the COUNTER reports was becoming essential if librarians were to continue using the reports. COUNTER discussed the problem with NISO, and the result was the SUSHI protocol, developed by NISO, which enables libraries and library consortia to automate the retrieval of COUNTER usage reports. Release 3 of the Code of Practice for Journals and Databases replaced Release 2 in August 2009. Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice, an integrated Code of Practice covering journals, databases, and books, as well as multimedia content, replaced Release 3 in December 2013. In 2017, COUNTER consulted widely with its communities to develop Release 5 (effective from January 2019). The result is a Code of Practice that aims to improve consistency, clarity, and flexibility, allowing for adaptation and extension as digital publishing evolves over the years. In 2014, COUNTER also published two new Codes of Practice. First, the COUNTER Code of Practice for Articles sets a standard for the recording and reporting of usage at the individual article level. A very important aspect of this code is that it can be implemented by repositories as well as by publishers and aggregators. This is important as repositories represent a significant and growing proportion of online usage. Secondly, a new Code of Practice for Usage Factors, which would enable publishers to calculate Usage Factors for their journals based on COUNTER data. Current projects include the development of a Code of Practice for recording and reporting the usage of research data.

Usage In 2019, usage of COUNTER statistics was integrated into Unsub, a web-based dashboard tool, to improve the cost-effectiveness of the institutions' subscription sets.

Structure COUNTER is supervised by a Board of Directors and administered by an Executive Committee and Technical Advisory Group. The Executive Committee and Technical Advisory Group are all volunteers.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Project COUNTER

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Project COUNTER claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Project COUNTER before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Project COUNTER ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Project COUNTER

In research: Project COUNTER appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Project COUNTER in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Project COUNTER is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Library science, Standards organisations in the United Kingdom, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Project COUNTER outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Project COUNTER in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Project COUNTER means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Project COUNTER out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Project COUNTER in simple terms?

Why does Project COUNTER matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Project COUNTER?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Project COUNTER.