BEST PRACTICE GUIDANCE
COUNTER has always tried to reflect the usage reporting needs of the knowledge community, and we encourage community members to tell us when there are gaps in the Code of Practice. However, we have also committed to keeping major releases of the Code infrequent, as they create a great deal of work for both report providers (publishers and technology services) and report consumers (libraries and consortia).
On this page, you’ll find best practice guidance developed by our volunteers and amended through community consultations. There is also a list of live projects that we’re working on.
Syndicated Usage
Content syndication is becoming increasingly common. Our syndicated usage best practice guidance applies to content available on multiple platforms. It describes how syndication platforms should share COUNTER-compliant usage reports with publishers.
Sharing reports this way will mean publishers have consistent, comparable usage metrics from all the syndicated usage platforms they work with. It will help them understand which ones are delivering return on the time and effort invested in syndication. The guidance also explains how institutional COUNTER reports can include syndicated usage. That will allow libraries to see comprehensive usage reporting for a publisher’s content, no matter where the usage happens.
Current projects
During the second half of 2025, the COUNTER Advisory Committee tackled three topics. Our goal was to build out new best practice guidelines. We consulted the community on our plans for all three projects. Now we are revising the draft guidelines in light of the feedback we received.
Reporting to multiple identities
Publisher platforms often offer multiple authentication methods to end users, whether that’s IP recognition, GetFTR, Shibboleth, or username-and-password. This is great when it allows a user to access content, but it might create an issue when the user can be connected to more than one institution during their session. Our goal for this project is to determine how the community would like to see usage reporting for users with multiple institutional links. We’re also going to develop fall-back positions for where the preferred outcome is not technically possible.
Generative and agentic AI
The introduction of generative and agentic technologies on publisher platforms is throwing up all sorts of questions about what usage can be counted, when, and why. Our AI working group is a way for us to start to understand what tools are being built and how they are used. That’s going to help us work out how AI usage interacts with our existing Code of Practice, and how the community would like to see us address the questions of usage metrics for AI. You can read an update on our news page.
Pathways to compliance
For small, non-profit publishers, the jump from no COUNTER reporting to full compliance may be too much to tackle. This working group is developing a step-by-step approach to make it viable for small publishers to begin their COUNTER journey, with each step also adding value to the libraries who depend on those usage reports.
Coming soon
The Advisory Committee decided to launch a new best practice working group on usage metrics for open access. We’ll be starting work in April. There are three open spaces for external participants, and if you want to be involved please contact tasha@countermetrics.org.
Get involved
If you are interested in participating in developing best practices, or there is a topic you’d like us to tackle, consider joining the Advisory Committee to represent your member organisation. You can also share topics by for best practice by emailing tasha@countermetrics.org.