COUNTER membership from 2026

COUNTER’s membership structure has stayed broadly the same since we were founded back in 2003. Over that time the knowledge community has undergone huge structural changes. As part of our 2023–2028 strategy we are making some changes to our membership tiering and introducing a suite of new member benefits. This post explains the changes we’re making. The membership approved them at the 2025 AGM, and we’ll be implementing the changes for the 2026 membership year.

Member benefits

In the past we’ve not been particularly clear about the benefits of membership. We’ve relied on members to maintain their financial support simply because they see value in COUNTER’s existence. As part of the changes, we’re clarifying the existing membership benefits and developing new benefits to address real needs in our community.

Benefits you already know about

• Inclusion in the COUNTER Registry.
• Early consultation about potential changes to the Code of Practice.
• The opportunity to engage with us through Committees and to stand for election to our Board of Directors.
• Voting rights on the activities that will shape our future, through the AGM.
• Guidance and support from Tasha, and through our technical volunteers, for implementing COUNTER.

New benefits introduced in 2024 and 2025

• Free registration for members’ staff for the COUNTER Conference and our member-only webinars.
• A bespoke webinar each year for your members or clients, for technology providers and library consortia/networks.
• Platform reviews for publishers. Understanding what to count, when, and how can be complex for platforms that fall outside of traditional book, database and journal framings. A platform review helps solve that problem.
• A seat on the Advisory Committee. This committee acts as a sounding board for potential future developments to the Code of Practice and our best practice guidance, as well as offering a network for exchanging ideas and problem solving.

Coming soon: new benefits in development

• New educational materials. We are regularly asked to go beyond what is available in our existing guides and videos. The COUNTER Academy will be an online-only course of eight to ten modules taking participants from COUNTER novices through to being able to work confidently with COUNTER API (sushi) harvesting tools and beyond. The Academy is only available to full members, not affiliates.
• Pre-audit reviews. Audits are expensive, and two of the key sources of failure are (a) report providers not using the Validator appropriately, and (b) lack of documentation about the expected behaviour of the platform under audit.

New member types for report consumers

We have three report consumer (library-related) membership types today: Consortium, Affiliate, and Library. Our goal with these changes was to keep them cost-neutral or better for library members. For example, we are introducing a new, discounted rate for small libraries serving fewer than 5,000 people (faculty, staff and students).

Library Consortium / Network Affiliate membership is limited to libraries who are affiliated with Library Consortia / Networks that are themselves members of COUNTER. The restriction affects fewer than five existing Affiliate members, and we will encourage them to switch to Library or Small Library membership as relevant.

New member types for report providers

Our most substantive change is to create new Technology Provider and Publisher Affiliate member types. There are six Technology Provider members of COUNTER, collectively providing COUNTER-as-a-service to about 240 publishers, or 80% of the platforms in the COUNTER Registry. Financially, Technology Providers contribute just 7.5% of COUNTER’s total revenue. We did a lot of financial modelling, and consulted with the Technology Provider members. This resulted in the new member types and pricing shown in the table below.

How the changes will be implemented

During August and September, Tasha and Siân will email primary contacts for all COUNTER members. We will explain the membership changes, and indicate which new membership type we think the organisation maps to. Where publisher members could drop to a Publisher Affiliate rate, or library members could drop to Library Consortium / Network Affiliate, we’ll make that clear. New membership tiers will be applied when we issue 2026 membership renewal invoices.

We’ve shown the membership pricing for 2025 and 2026 in sterling (GBP). We’ll be calculating the pricing in US dollars and Euros based on the exchange rates between those currencies and sterling at the end of June, and will include that information in our messages to members. We’ll also update the members page to reflect the changes and allow organisations to sign up for the new membership tiers in September.