COUNTER on ORIGINal Thoughts
19 May 2025The ORIGINal Thoughts team invited us to contribute an article explaining the background to COUNTER and how normalised metrics can be used more effectively by publishers. Here’s just a snippet for you – pop over to origineditorial.com to read the whole thing.
“Here’s a brief rundown of how we’ve seen COUNTER reporting being used within publishing houses, beyond sales:
- Editorial can use COUNTER metrics as part of their content development strategy. If a particular journal or set of articles is seeing high usage generally, it could be an idea to commission more on that topic. If the usage is coming from a specific institution, that might be a source of new authors or reviewers. Equally, a spike in denials for a particular topic can be an indication of something novel—for example, some virology journals reported a spike in denials for articles on coronaviruses in late 2019.
- Tech teams can use COUNTER metrics to identify flaws in the user experience, or to build a business case for investment in developments.
- Marketing can track COUNTER usage either institutionally or globally to provide evidence of the effectiveness of usage campaigns, They could also plan campaigns to boost usage from specific institutions.”