COUNTER Commits to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure

COUNTER is a community-led organisation and our Code of Practice is the industry standard for usage metrics. Today, we are pleased to announce that we are committing to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), which we feel align well with our mission and values.

We have chosen to work with POSI as it means we can join a growing community with shared values, in the same way as we participate in IOI’s Infra Finder initiative. The self-assessment process was a valuable guide in developing our plans for the coming years, and we plan to re-assess our progress against the POSI principles regularly.

You can find our detailed self-assessment against POSI down below, with a comment on each of the 16 principles, graded green where we feel we are compliant or nearly compliant, and amber where we have work to do. Since we know that’s quite a lot to take in, we’ve also produced a summary table showing our grading.

Summary of POSI alignment

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.

COUNTER is 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. 

We know there is work to be done to better engage with communities outside of the Anglo-European world and have projects in train during 2024 to do so.  

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 have been governed by a Board of Directors elected by the membership, to whom the Executive Director is accountable and who are responsible for setting our strategic direction. We also have an Executive Committee overseeing our operations and the Technical Advisory Group defining the COUNTER Code of Practice. Our membership extends beyond libraries and publishers to include technology providers, consortia and industry bodies. While our Board of Directors is drawn solely from the membership, we do have non-members participating in other committees.

Following completion of a strategic review in 2023, during 2024 we will be updating the Terms of Reference for all COUNTER committees to increase transparency and encourage participation. 

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. 

As part of a project to review our membership benefits and fees, taking place during 2024, we plan to introduce heavily discounted and free memberships for potential members in low-income countries, which will facilitate greater participation from regions currently under-represented in our membership. 

Transparent governance. Coded 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).

While we have always operated within the transparency guidelines required of us by the UK Government, for example through our annual reporting and financial processes, we have work to do in this area. In 2023 we made a public call for nominations to the Board of Directors for the first time, opening up Directorship roles to all members, and as already mentioned we are undertaking a refresh of all committee Terms of Reference during 2024 which will include better guidance as to how individuals are recruited to and serve on our committees. 

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: a powerful way to create trust is to publicly describe a plan addressing the conditions under which an organisation or service would be wound down. It should include how this would happen and how any assets could be archived and preserved when passed to a successor organisation or service. Any such organisation or service must adopt POSI and honour the POSI principles.

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 plan to include this question of our value to the community as a core aspect of our future strategic reviews, which will take place on a five-year cycle. In the interim, the Executive Director will be asked to develop a process by which the organisation could be wound down, including archiving requirements and hand-over opportunities.

Formal incentives to fulfil mission & wind-down. Coded Amber.

Defined as: infrastructures exist for a specific purpose, and that purpose can be radically simplified or even rendered unnecessary by technological or social change. Organisations and services should regularly review community support and the need for their activities. If it is possible, the organisation or service (and staff) should have direct incentives to deliver on the mission and wind down.

There are many ways that we can see technology facilitating easier usage reporting in compliance with the COUNTER standard, and we are keen to explore those in conjunction with our membership and community. We regularly review all COUNTER tools as well as the Code of Practice to determine whether they still bring value to the community, and will continue to do so. As part of the review cycle, the Executive Director will be tasked with identifying the conditions under which our services will no longer be required. 

Theme two: Sustainability

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: organisations (or services) that define sustainability based merely on recovering costs are brittle and stagnant. It is not enough to merely survive; organisations and services have to be able to adapt and change. To weather economic, social and technological volatility, they need financial resources beyond immediate operating costs.

We aim to end each year with a small surplus, though in some years we only achieve break-even. Our surplus funds are used in two ways: firstly to contribute towards our reserves policy, and secondly to fund investment in meeting our strategic objectives. During 2024, for example, we are making use of some of our investment pot to rebuild the COUNTER website to improve our education and support tools. 

Goal to create financial reserves. Coded Green.

Defined as: a high priority should be having ring-fenced financial reserves, separate from operating funds, that can support implementing living will plans, including a complete, orderly wind down or transition to a successor organisation, or major unexpected events.

We currently hold the equivalent of 18 months of operating costs in our reserves, which we are advised is an appropriate level of reserves for an organisation like COUNTER. However, we have not recently assessed the reserves policy, which is something we will address during 2024.

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 through membership fees paid by the community and we believe this to be absolutely consistent with our mission. 

Revenue based on services, not data. Coded 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.

This is a tricky point to address, as we have not historically generated revenue based on either services or on the Code itself (our data analogue). The Code of Practice, our tools and our educational materials are freely available to everyone, whether or not they are members of COUNTER. However, during 2023 and in the early part of 2024 it has become apparent that the community would like us to start providing services, even if those are provided at a cost, so we are investigating various possibilities. 

Theme three: Insurance

Open source. Coded 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.

As a standards body, we do not provide infrastructure of the kind typically considered under POSI. The Code of Practice and our educational materials are currently published under Copyright, but are freely available to everyone. The Board of Directors is considering a move to a Creative Commons Attribution licence for educational materials and the Code of Practice; a decision will be made on this during 2024.

Open data (within constraints of privacy laws). Not applicable.

Defined as: For an infrastructure to be forked (reproduced), it will be necessary to replicate all relevant data. The CC0 waiver is the best practice in making data openly and legally available. Privacy and data protection laws will limit the extent to which this is possible.

As noted above, the Code of Practice, but we do not host data. 

Available data (within constraints of privacy laws). Not applicable.

Defined as: it is not enough that the data be “open” if there is no practical way to obtain it. Underlying data should be made easily available via periodic open data dumps.

COUNTER maintains and develops the Code of Practice, but we do not host data. 

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.