Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure: 2026 update
16 July 2026COUNTER is a community-led organisation and our Code of Practice is the industry standard for usage metrics. In 2024 we committed to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), and this year we have re-evaluated ourselves against version 2.0 of POSI.
You can find our detailed self-assessment down below, with a comment on each of the principles. We have graded ourselves green where we feel we are compliant or nearly compliant. Where we have an internal risk score over 12, we’ve graded ourselves amber. We don’t have any red scores. We’ve also produced a summary table showing our grading.
Summary of POSI alignment
| Category | Principle | Where we are |
|---|---|---|
| Governance | Coverage across the research enterprise | Green |
| Stakeholder governed | Green | |
| Non-discriminatory participation or membership | Green | |
| Transparent governance | Green | |
| Cannot lobby | Green | |
| Living will | Amber | |
| Regular review of purpose and community value – NEW for version 2.0 | Green | |
| Sustainability | Transparent operations – NEW for version 2.0 | Green |
| Time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities | Green | |
| Goal to generate surplus | Green | |
| Establish and maintain financial reserves guided by policy – UPDATED for version 2.0 | Green | |
| Mission-consistent revenue generation | Green | |
| Revenue based on services, not data | Green | |
| Volunteer labour – NEW for version 2.0 | Amber | |
| Transition planning – NEW for version 2.0 | Amber | |
| Insurance | Open source | Amber |
| Ensure open and secure data accessibility within legal and ethical constraints – UPDATED for version 2.0 | Not applicable | |
| Available and preserved – UPDATED for version 2.0 | Green | |
| Patent non-assertion | Green | |
| Prioritise interoperability and open standards to ensure continuity and resilience – NEW for version 2.0 | Green |
Detailed assessment
Theme one: Governance
Coverage across the scholarly enterprise. Coded Green.
Defined as: research transcends disciplines, geography, institutions, and stakeholders. Organisations and the infrastructure they run need to reflect this.
We are committed to functioning as a standard across the knowledge community, inclusive of all disciplines, organisation types and geographies. Our Registry lists hundreds of publisher platforms across a multitude of disciplines and is consistently expanding, and we have member representation across the library community.
Over the last two years we have made strides in engaging with communities outside of the Anglo-European world, including attending and presenting at regional conferences and offering webinars to consortia on topics of interest to them.
Stakeholder governed. Coded Green.
Defined as: a board-governed organisation drawn from the stakeholder community builds confidence that the organisation will take decisions driven by community consensus and a balance of interests.
Since our founding in 2003, we ‘ve been governed by a Board of Directors, who are responsible for setting our strategic direction. The Board is appointed by the membership. The Executive Director is accountable to the Board. We also have an Executive Committee overseeing our operations, an Advisory Committee open to all members of COUNTER which develops the COUNTER Code of Practice, a Code Team for technical support, and an Education Committee to ensure we deliver what the community needs.
Non-discriminatory participation or membership. Coded Green.
Defined as: we see the best option as an “opt-in” approach with principles of non-discrimination and inclusivity where any stakeholder group may express an interest and should be welcome. Representation in governance must reflect the character of the community or membership.
Our membership is open to all, but inclusion in the Registry does require that report providers meet our standards – that is, they are able to deliver usage reporting in line with the COUNTER Code of Practice and are capable of passing an independent audit.
In late 2024 we introduce completely free memberships for libraries, consortia, publishers and others in Research for Life countries, which has facilitated greater participation from regions previously under-represented in our membership.
Transparent governance. Coded Green (was Amber).
Defined as: to achieve trust, the processes and policies for selecting representatives to governance groups should be transparent (within the constraints of privacy laws).
We continue to operate within the transparency guidelines required of us by the UK Government, for example through our annual reporting and financial processes.
Since 2023 we have had open calls for nominations to the Board of Directors, opening up Directorship roles to all members. In 2025 we created a new Advisory Committee to guide future developments of the Code and associated best practices. All member organisations are entitled to a seat on the Committee.
All committees have up-to-date Terms of Reference, including clear terms of service for individuals participating in them.
Cannot lobby. Coded Green.
Defined as: infrastructure organisations should not lobby for regulatory change to cement their own positions or narrow self-interest. However, an infrastructure organisation’s role is to support its community, and this can include advocating for policy changes.
While we are active in encouraging the widest possible adoption of the COUNTER Code of Practice, we do not lobby for regulatory change – nor do we have the capacity to do so in future.
Living will. Coded Amber.
Defined as: to build trust, organisations should establish and communicate clear commitments regarding their long-term stewardship responsibilities, including the principles by which assets, data, resources, services, and staff would be responsibly transferred to a successor or the organisation or service wound down. The commitments should address future governance, with defined criteria for acceptable successor organisations. This should include continued alignment with POSI and any legal or structural constraints.
COUNTER’s Code of Practice, tools, and most of our educational materials are open source. Should we need to transfer to a successor organisation, the Board would consider appropriate guardians for the materials. Other signatories to POSI would be preferred successors.
The Executive Director holds an outline process by which the organisation could be wound down or transferred if need be, including archiving requirements and hand-over opportunities, but this is yet to be reviewed and ratified by the Board.
Regular review of purpose and community value. Coded Green.
Defined as: organisations and services should regularly review their relevance, effectiveness, and the level of community support to determine whether their continued operation is necessary. If no longer needed, they should take responsible steps to transition or wind down operations in consultation with the community and in alignment with their living will.
The community is evolving and the need for trustworthy metrics based on a shared community standard has increased with the volume of scholarly output. Against this background we discussed the need for COUNTER during our strategic review in 2023, and concluded that there is a strong rationale for the organisation and our Code of Practice. We undertake a comprehensive community survey every other year, with the last iteration in 2025. Key questions within the survey tackle the relevance and value of COUNTER to the community, gaps in our services and support, and areas where we should improve our effectiveness.
Theme two: Sustainability
Transparent operations. Coded Green.
Defined as: to enable organisational accountability and openness, the operating policies and procedures, detailed financials, sustainability models, fees, strategic and product roadmaps, organisational charts, and other appropriate operational information should be made openly available (within the constraints of privacy laws). Information should be available for investigation and reuse by the community.
We have always provided a reasonably detailed Annual Report, including our finances, through Companies House records. Our membership fees, organisational charts and other operational information are available on our website and kept updated. The whole community is made aware of key operational changes through news items on the website and (opt-in) newsletters. We also provide information to members as part of the Annual General Meeting.
Time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities. Coded Green.
Defined as: operations are supported by sustainable revenue sources – whereas time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities. Depending on grants to fund ongoing and/or long-term infrastructure operations fully makes them fragile and distracts from building core infrastructure.
COUNTER is financially supported by membership fees, which are contributed by libraries, consortia, publishers, intermediaries and technology providers. We seek project funds on occasion, but always for specific activities (e.g. to cover the costs of translating our Friendly Guides).
Goal to generate surplus. Coded Green.
Defined as: it is not enough to merely survive; organisations and services have to be able to adapt and change. Organisations and services that define long-term sustainability based only on recovering costs risk becoming brittle and stagnant. To weather economic, social and technological volatility, organisations and services need financial resources beyond immediate operating costs.
We aim to end each year with a small operating surplus. Our surplus funds are used in two ways: firstly to contribute towards our reserves policy, and secondly to fund capital expenditure in tools and services that contribute towards community needs and our strategic objectives. During 2025, for example, we invested in significant upgrades to the free-to-use COUNTER Validator.
Establish and maintain financial reserves guided by policy. Coded Green.
Defined as: organisations and services should have a clear policy on maintaining financial reserves, including the purpose, minimum and maximum level, and governance of these funds. The actual level of reserves should be determined and periodically reviewed by the governing body, ensuring that resources are available to support Living Will implementation, including an orderly wind-down, transition to a successor, or response to major unforeseen events. A financial reserve policy might include how funds will be held, under what circumstances they will be used, and how much would be necessary for an adequate wind-down or transfer of assets, given the complexity of the organisation’s infrastructure.
We aim to hold the equivalent of 18 months of operating costs in our reserves, which we are advised is an appropriate level for an organisation like COUNTER. Reviewing our reserves policy, including the amount and use cases for reserves, is part of the annual budgeting process.
Mission-consistent revenue generation. Coded Green.
Defined as: revenue sources should be evaluated against the infrastructure’s mission and not run counter to the aims of the organisation or service.
As noted above, our revenues are generated primarily through membership fees paid by the community and we believe this to be absolutely consistent with our mission. In 2025 we added a new education option, COUNTER Academy. Unlike most COUNTER services, Academy participation is not free. However, as one of our strategic objectives is to increase adoption and use of COUNTER metrics, charging for the Academy is still consistent with the mission.
Revenue based on services, not data. Coded Green (was Amber).
Defined as: data related to the running of the scholarly infrastructure should be community property. Appropriate revenue sources might include value-added services, consulting, API Service Level Agreements, or membership fees.
We have not historically generated revenue based on either services or data. The Code of Practice, our tools and our educational materials are freely available to everyone, whether or not they are members of COUNTER. We introduced an educational service, COUNTER Academy, in 2025, and are investigating other services based on community demand.
Volunteer labour. Coded Amber.
Defined as: organisations that rely on volunteers and their labour should recognise this as a valuable resource for the organisation’s long-term viability, and factor it into sustainability planning and risk management.
With only one part-time member of staff and one day per week of contract support, COUNTER is extremely reliant on volunteers and we are extremely grateful for their time and dedication. Our dependence on volunteers forms a key part of our risk assessment and management process. We have documented what volunteers are asked to do for COUNTER and continuously look for ways to minimise the time demands associated with their work for us. We are also working to reduce our reliance on specific volunteers by expanding the pool of people associated with different COUNTER activities.
Historically COUNTER volunteers have stayed with us for extended periods of time, which argues for a lower risk score. We changed our governance structure in 2025 to expand our volunteer pool, meaning many people have only recently become engaged with us. As such, it’s a bit early to be sure that people will remain engaged long-term.
Transition planning. Coded Amber.
Defined as: organisations that are heavily dependent on a limited number of individuals should take steps to reduce their dependence on these individuals, including via transition and succession planning, so that the organisation is not at risk of collapse in the event of their departure.
We only have one permanent employee, the Executive Director, who is part-time. She covers everything from membership administration to education, via technical support and governance. She has developed and maintained detailed documentation about how to run COUNTER, and back-up access to all tools and services is available to designated people, but we do acknowledge the risks associated with relying so heavily on a single individual.
Equally, one of our volunteers, Bernd Oberknapp, built and continues to maintain the testing module underpinning the COUNTER Validator. He is also the primary source of detailed technical support for the COUNTER API (sushi) and JSON schema. We are working to reduce our reliance on Bernd by expanding the Code Team and contracting support for the Validator to Big Dig Data, who are developing familiarity with the testing module.
Theme three: Insurance
Open source. Coded Green (was Amber).
Defined as: all software and assets required to run the infrastructure should be available under an open-source licence. This does not include other software that may be involved with running the organisation.
The Code of Practice and our educational materials are currently published under Copyright, but are freely available to everyone. The source materials for the Code are held in GitHub and are openly available. The same applies to our tools.
Ensure open and secure data accessibility within legal and ethical constraints. Not applicable.
Defined as: To support potential forking or replication, infrastructure should aim to make all relevant data openly available, following best practices such as applying a CC0 waiver where appropriate. This must be balanced with compliance with privacy, data protection, and security requirements. Organisations should have a clear policy outlining how private or sensitive data will be handled—particularly in the event of a transfer to another organisation—to ensure continuity, legal compliance, and responsible stewardship.
COUNTER maintains and develops the Code of Practice, but we do not host data.
Available and preserved. Coded Green.
Defined as: it is not enough that content, data, and software be “open” if there is no practical way to obtain them. These resources should be made easily available with clear public documentation about where they are and how to access them, as well as an open licence where possible. It is not enough that “open” resources are available. In line with the Living Will, it is essential to deposit content, data, and software with at least one trusted third-party digital archive.
The source materials for the Code are held in GitHub and are openly available. The same applies to our tools.
Archival copies of the Code and of our education materials are held under a CC BY license in Zenodo, the open repository.
Patent non-assertion. Coded Green.
Defined as: the organisation should commit to a patent non-assertion policy or covenant. The organisation may obtain patents to protect its own operations but not use them to prevent the community from replicating the infrastructure.
COUNTER has never used patents to protect its operations, and we cannot foresee a situation where we would need one in future. We are committed to ensuring that the community can continue to freely use the Code of Practice, our tools and our educational materials.
Prioritise interoperability and open standards to ensure continuity and resilience. Coded Green.
Defined as: infrastructures should adopt and support widely accepted open standards—both formal and de facto—to ensure that systems, data, and services can be replicated, migrated, or integrated with minimal disruption without the use of proprietary extensions or software. Where relevant, organisations should document dependencies on standards.
The Code references other relevant standards, such as KBART, wherever applicable. Our recommendations include requirements for persistent identifiers and other standard identifiers such as ISSN in COUNTER reports. The COUNTER API (sushi) uses Open API 3.1 and delivers a simple JSON file. For those who prefer tabular format, either .tsv or .xlsx reports are required.