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The purpose of this paper is to provide a library with useful information about selection criteria for an electronic resource assessment system and practical assistance on how to implement efficiently such a system.

The paper is based on literature review, desk research, and implementation experience.

The paper identifies a number of homegrown, open‐source, and commercial electronic resource assessment systems and discusses their selection criteria. Based on the implementation of 360 Counter, the paper details the efficient way to implement the system.

Collecting usage statistics is very important to make informed and well‐rounded collection decisions. Libraries are seeking suitable measuring tools to meet their needs. This paper reviews several electronic resource assessment systems, discusses the selection criteria and implementation process of 360 Counter, and detailed learned lessons as well. Future directions for usage statistics are also explored. It is believed that the deployment experience should be instructive when carrying out similar projects.

The purpose of this paper is to look more closely, in the context of a given case study, at the role of civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society, as an essential goal of an emancipatory and radical social accounting project.

A case study of a Canadian company’s plans to open a gold mine in western Romania is here analysed. Civil society’s opposition to the mining project gave rise to an unprecedented social movement contesting the project’s utility for Romanian society. The role played by counter-accounts produced by civil society groups is investigated.

Counter-accounts produced by civil society played multiple roles in the case study analysed. First, counter-accounts indicated the failure of corporate reports to present the gold mining project in a balanced manner. Second, counter-accounts were successful in problematizing the corporate approach to addressing the social, cultural and environmental impacts of the project, while also nurturing societal debate on these issues. Third, counter-accounts exposed the ideological inclinations of state institutions to favour economic interests over the social, cultural and environmental ones. As a result of these contributions, even if the counter-accounts were subjective, this study claims that they form a good basis for the development of emancipatory accounting.

Limitations associated with an interpretative approach and case study research apply.

The paper illustrates the potential of civil society’s counter accounts to enable societal debates, as means towards democratic, transformative change.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate upon the notion of counter accounting, to assess the potentiality of online reports for counter accounting and hence for counter accounting's emancipatory potential as online reporting, to assess the extent to which this potential is being realised and to suggest ways forward from a critical perspective.

There are several components to a critical interpretive analysis: critical evaluative analysis, informed to some extent by prior literature in diverse fields; web survey; questionnaire survey; case study.

Web‐based counter accounting may be understood as having emancipatory potential, some of which is being realised in practice. Not all the positive potential is, however, being realised as one might hope: things that might properly be done are not always being done. And there are threats to progress in the future.

Clarification of a notion of counter accounting incorporating the activity of groups such as pressure groups and NGOs; rare study into practices and opinions in this context through a critical evaluative lens.

Using COUNTER‐compliant statistics, the purpose of this study is to conduct an in‐depth analysis of usage of online journals in a group of major UK universities.

The paper describes in detail developments, as well as other progress made on COUNTER since the 2003 Northumbria conference. It also addresses the practical challenges faced by vendors and librarians in implementing COUNTER, and concludes with future plans for the project.

The study team has successfully collected and validated a considerable set of journal usage, subscription and cost data and has assisted in the testing and validation of the “successful full‐text article request” as a possible unit of measurement of “usage” that can be applied consistently and reliably across all publishers.

The paper shows how usage relates to costs, institution profile and subject spread and develops a set of measures that are likely to be used more widely as indicators of the value of online journals.

This paper aims to share some experiences and practical activities related to the use and management of usage data in the Digital Resource Acquisition Alliance of Chinese Academic Libraries (DRAA) as a reference for library consortia engaged in providing usage statistics services of e-resources to member libraries.

A literature review and online survey are used to analyze the research and practice of e-resources usage statistics conducted internationally. The case of DRAA is introduced to present how DRAA develops usage statistics services and promotes the implementation of the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) to deliver usage statistics to member libraries. Future developments and enhancements are also described.

The main actions taken by DRAA to develop usage statistics services are as follows: development of the DRAA Usage Statistics Portal to provide a single point of access to usage statistics from participating publishers on behalf of member libraries; development of a SUSHI client, taking the lead in promoting SUSHI implementation to automatically obtain usage statistics in Chinese academic libraries; establishment of a working group on usage statistics and the China Academic Library and Information System/DRAA Standards and Recommended Practices Research Task Group to form a long-term mechanism for monitoring and gathering usage statistics; and strengthening of the understanding and application of standards and best practices for libraries and vendors in China. Scheduled enhancements in the future include a deep analysis and utilization of usage statistics, the promotion of Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources and SUSHI to Chinese academic resource publishers and raising awareness about normalizing usage statistics.

This paper has pertinence and wider implications for library consortia engaged in providing e-resources usage statistics services to member libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which sustainability reporting can be viewed as a simulacrum used to camouflage real sustainable-development problems and project an idealized view of the firms' situations.

The method was based on the content analysis and counter accounting of 23 sustainability reports from firms in the energy and mining sectors which had received application levels of A or A+ from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The information disclosed in some 2,700 pages of reports was structured around 92 GRI indicators and compared with 116 significant news events that clearly addressed the responsibility of these firms in sustainable development problems. Moreover, the 1,258 pictures included in sustainability reports were categorized into recurring themes from an inductive perspective.

A total of 90 per cent of the significant negative events were not reported, contrary to the principles of balance, completeness and transparency of GRI reports. Moreover, the pictures included in these reports showcase various simulacra clearly disconnected with the impact of business activities.

The paper shows the relevance of the counter accounting approach in assessing the quality of sustainability reports and question the reliability of the GRI's A or A+ application levels. It contributes to debates concerning the transparency of sustainability reports in light of Debord's and Baudrillard's critical perspective. The paper reveals the underexplored role of images in the emergence of several types of simulacra.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between electronic journal downloads and citations and whether online electronic resource usage can be adopted as an alternative to citation for evaluation of scholarly discourse.

A consolidated 16 publishers’ COUNTER usage data of UGC-Infonet members was collected from INFLIBNET Centre. The usage was meticulously filtered from UGC-subscribed journals and institutional subscriptions. The quantitative data were analysed to establish the relationship between download, impact factor (IF) and price. Multiple regression analysis was used to assess the influence of price and IF on usage and to predict the usage when they are known and the threshold for significance was set at p < 0.05.

There exists a relationship between IF and downloads of journals in UGC-Infonet. Journal IF and price significantly influence usage, where journal IF plays an important role in the intensity of the use. Also, the top 25 hottest downloaded papers were journals with IF; hence, no journal without IF featured in the top 25 most downloaded journals in the consortia. The relationship between the top 25 IF journals in the consortia and download is strong (r = 0.368537).

The only account that reports on the relationship between journal IFs and downloads for UGC-Infonet consortia. Also, the influence of usage behaviour with respect to citation and price of a journal.