Crash Course in Counter 5 Metrics for Ascension Librarians

  

Do you need a crash course in Counter 5 Metrics?  

We knew it was coming.  Many of our database vendors have already                                                stopped producing usage stats in the old Counter 4 format,                                                           and are only offering stats in Counter 5 now.  

There's a lot to know, including:

• New definitions of the Counter 5 metrics:
• Total vs. Item Unique Investigations
• Total vs. Item Unique Requests

• What's the difference between investigations and requests?
• How and what do they count (or NOT count)?
• How do they translate to the old Counter 4 usage stats? 
• Just what stats should I be tracking now?
• What reports will give me those stats?

Here are some additional learning resources to get you started:

The Counter Project Foundation Classes video series on YouTube.

1. Metric Types *  (Definitions)
2. Reports *
3. Metrics & Reports: Putting it all Together *
4. Attributes, Elements & Other Slightly Techy Things
5. Book Reports
6. Database Reports
7. Journal Reports
8. Understanding the Use of Open Access Content
9. Working with Counter 5 Reports in Microsoft Excel
10. Platform Reports
11. Usage in the Time of the Pandemic

Handouts and Guides:

* THE FRIENDLY GUIDE TO RELEASE 5 FOR LIBRARIANS

• This guide seems to track along with videos 1-2-3 of the Foundation classes listed above.
• Written by Tasha Mellins-Cohen, this guide will help Librarians prepare for Release 5 of the COUNTER Code of Practice.  
• Offers a wealth of info about the new Metrics, Master Reports and Standard Views.
• Includes a map of key Release 4 reports to their Release 5 counterparts.
• User scenarios illustrated with Counter 5 reports.   

More Friendly Guides to Counter 5 

• Journal Stats
• Book Stats 

Silverchair Counter 4 to Counter 5 Release Transition User Guide

Another video:

A Practical Guide to COUNTER Release 5 from ASERL on Vimeo 

(November 2020; about 1 hour)

Some useful notes:

Counter 5 Metric Types & Definitions:

What's the difference between Investigations and Requests in Counter 5?

• Total Item Requests appears to be equivalent to the old Fulltext Views                            or FT Requests in C4.
• Unique Item Requests is the new and better metric used to calculate cost-per-use, because it eliminates the double counts when someone pulls up the html AND pdf for the same article in the same session. 
• Total Item Investigations appears to count the total clicks on the site.  
• Total Item Investigations is a good metric for citation databases like Cinahl,      since users may interact with it more looking at abstracts, or clicking out to a linkresolver to get fulltext elsewhere, or ordering via an ILL form.         

          

 

• Accessing an item as FT counts as both a request AND an investigation                              (an expression of interest).  (See image above.)

What metrics do I need to be tracking for national Ascension Library Services?

We've distilled it down to just a handful (NOT all) of the new C5 metrics:

Don't worry: We're creating a Playbook to lead you through all the steps of 

running the recommended reports and pulling the required stats.    More to come ...