Best practice guidance: Pathway to Compliance

One of our strategic objectives is to reduce barriers to compliance with the COUNTER Code of Practice, particularly for smaller groups who lack technical expertise. As part of those efforts, we’ve been building guidelines for small publishers who want to become COUNTER-compliant. We call it the Pathway to Compliance, and it’s been published today. As with all best practices, this was open to community consultation before being revised and then approved by the COUNTER Executive Committee in April 2026.

Thanks go to our working group, who helped develop options that should work for small publishers while still offering real benefits for libraries:

• Orazio Cappello, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing, Inc
• Karen Harker, University of North Texas Libraries
• Heather Heckman, University of South Carolina
• Meghan Lenahan, Binghamton University
• Stuart Maxwell, Scholarly iQ
• Bernd Oberknapp, ReDI, Freiburg University Library

You can find the guidance, and others, on our Best Practice page.