COUNTER releases the Report Validation Tool

The free tool that will check COUNTER usage reports and SUSHI

The tool is now available on the COUNTER website for use by publishers, vendors and libraries:

Libraries use COUNTER reports to inform collection building and decision making. They demand that publishers and vendors comply with the COUNTER Code of Practice.

Compliance includes the implementation of Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) protocol, which enables libraries to download quality-checked data from many publishers, removing the need to visit numerous web sites.

COUNTER and SUSHI provide publishers and vendors with documentation and guidance; however, even with this assistance the rate of interoperability and compliance problems can be high.  The COUNTER Report Validation Tool, made available through a generous donation by EBSCO Information Services, will help address this issue.

The tool will enable publishers, vendors and usage consolidation products to test their implementation of the SUSHI protocol and COUNTER reports, ensuring errors are caught and corrected before release. The result will be more efficient deployment and improved interoperability.

The tool will improve implementation of COUNTER and SUSHI, lower development and QA costs since developers can “test early and test often” allowing them to catch and correct errors early in the process.

Greater compliance by vendors and publishers means that libraries will get data that are more accurate more efficiently, leading to better decision making.

EBSCO Chief Product Strategist Oliver Pesch is also a NISO Board Member as well as Co-chair of NISO’s SUSHI Standards Committee and a member of the Executive Committee for Project COUNTER. Pesch says by providing funding for the validation tool, EBSCO recognizes the importance of SUSHI and COUNTER to the scholarly information community. “This resource aids content providers in their implementations of COUNTER and SUSHI by offering a means to measure the accuracy and compliance levels of their solution. The tool also gives users of COUNTER reports an easy way to test a questionable report for compliance and report issues to the content provider concerned. The result should be smoother audits, less re-work, fewer customer service calls and ultimately happier customers”

Website URL and information

The COUNTER Report Validation Tool https://validate.projectcounter.org/login is free to use and requires simple registration
About COUNTER: COUNTER is a not-for-profit membership organisation which provides the standard that enables the knowledge community to count the use of electronic resources. Known as the Code of Practice, the standard ensures vendors and publishers can provide their library customers with consistent, credible and comparable usage data. For more information contact: lorraine.estelle@counterusage.org

About EBSCO Information Services: EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 11,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 900,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.