Multiple platforms, one report

After the COUNTER Conference, one of our publisher members asked whether they could reduce librarians’ workloads by offering reports for all of their platforms (websites) in a single report. The short answer is yes, absolutely!

The slightly longer answer is, of course, it depends on how the reporting service is set up.

Think about a publisher like Taylor & Francis. The Registry shows four platforms serviced from a single reporting service, and a fifth that’s served by Atypon.

The four platforms served from the Taylor & Francis reporting service all share a single instance of the COUNTER API, with a shared URL. That means it would be sensible for a librarian to be able to harvest a single Platform Report (PR) covering activity across Europa World, Europa World of Learning, T&F eBooks, and World’s Who’s Who, rather than needing to harvest four separate reports. In the same way, one Database Report (DR) could cover Europa World, Europa World of Learning, and World’s Who’s Who.

It would be easy to see usage across the different platforms even in a shared report, because COUNTER reports include a field for the platform name.

If T&F wanted to make things even easier for librarians and allow them to harvest the T&F Online data in the same place, then our best practice on syndicated usage would apply.

Apps and APIs

Publishers who offer access to their content through apps such as ebook readers should follow the same logic. As long as the app is using the same reporting service, usage of content on the app should be included as another platform in your COUNTER reports.

The same applies for text and data mining (TDM) activity through an API. In many cases those APIs are considered to be separate platforms, plugged into the same reporting service, so they can be reported with a distinct platform name in the your main COUNTER reports.