Oxford Journals Online usage statistics and the COUNTER code of practice

Citation

(2003), "Oxford Journals Online usage statistics and the COUNTER code of practice", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 37 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2003.28037dab.009

Oxford Journals Online usage statistics and the COUNTER code of practice

Oxford Journals Online usage statistics and the COUNTER code of practice

Oxford University Press (OUP) has announced that it is among the first group of vendors to make counting online usage of networked electronic resources (COUNTER) compliant usage statistics available for its online journals. The COUNTER code of practice (COP), is an international initiative which has been developed to provide a consistent and credible means of measuring the usage of online products. Release 1 of the COP, which focuses on journals and databases, was published in January 2003 (www.projectcounter.org).

Oxford University Press signed a formal declaration of compliance in March 2003. Martin Richardson, director, Journals Division, said:

Following the launch of our own statistics service in January 2003 and as a pioneer sponsor of the COUNTER initiative, OUP is proud and delighted to be one of the first publishers to make compliant statistics available. The COUNTER initiative fits well with our goal of providing the library community with the functionality and feedback they tell us they need, and we look forward to supporting the continuing development of the COUNTER code of practice over the coming years.

Launched in January 2003, the OUP usage reports are available both to consortia and individual organisations using one or more titles from the Oxford Journals Online Collection, and can be accessed online in HTML format or downloaded providing easier manipulation by library administrators. Pam Sutherland, head of IT, Journals, said:

Compliance with the COUNTER code of practice is not just about providing data in a nicely formatted report. We have also reviewed our systems to ensure that we are measuring and logging the access and data elements behind all of our reports in a consistent manner in line with the code.

OUP usage reports are compliant from those dated January 2003 onwards and historic reports from 2001 onwards were compliant by mid-2003. A demonstration of the usage statistics package is available at: www.oupjournals.org/statistics.

Oxford University Press (OUP) is a department of the University of Oxford in the UK and is the world’s largest university press. It publishes more than 4,500 new books a year, has a presence in over 50 countries, and employs over 3,700 people world-wide. OUP is also a leading publisher of academic journals in science, medicine, humanities and the social sciences. Its collection of some 170 online journals includes some of the world’s most highly cited and prestigious journals, in a broad range of disciplines.

For further information please contact: Amy Tucker, Library Marketing Manager, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Tel: +44(0) 1865 354420; Fax: +44(0) 1865 556646; E-mail: amy.tucker@oupjournals.org; URL: www.oup.org