Claiming compliance in a press release?

This is the latest in our series of posts responding to questions from the COUNTER community. This time, we’re looking at what happens when a publisher or technology provider puts out a press release that says they offer COUNTER-compliant reporting.

There are two ways we find out about compliance claims. The first is media alerts. We have them set up for ‘COUNTER report(s)(ing)’ and ‘COUNTER metric(s)’, and most press releases will show up through that channel. The other is when questions come in from community members.

Say it with me, folks: if it’s not in the Registry, it’s not compliant! So when we spot a press release, or receive a question, the first thing we do is check the Registry. If there’s no Registry record, the next step is to email the publisher.

There are a few things we ask the publisher to do:

• Get involved with COUNTER by becoming a member. The Code and our tools are free to use, but only members are eligible to appear in the Registry.
• Run their reports and API through the free COUNTER Validator as a basic check.
• Share their audit results (if there are any) or schedule an audit to prove their COUNTER compliance.

If they can’t or won’t do those things, we ask them to make it clear on their website that they offer COUNTER-like or COUNTER-style reports that are not verified as compliant.