The Optical Society (OSA) and Scholarly iQ has announced that OSA's usage statistics for its portfolio of peer-reviewed journals have been upgraded and are now available using the new COUNTER Release 4 (R4) standards. These new standards, like the ones already in place, have been accepted by the scientific publishing industry worldwide and govern the recording and exchange of online usage data.
The new COUNTER 4 reports are the latest set of usage reports that can be used by librarians to ensure the independent and accurate reporting of publishers' usage statistics.
New features included in the COUNTER Release 4 standards include a single, integrated Code of Practice covering journals, databases, books, reference works and multimedia content; the ability to report usage of Gold Open Access articles separately via the new 'Journal Report 1 GOA'; an expanded 'Journal Report 2,' which includes information on denied-access content and unlicensed content, in addition to the 'Turnaways' data, which is covered by earlier COUNTER Releases; a modified "Journal Report 5," which reports on the usage of full-text article requests by year and by journal from a library's acquired archival content; a new multimedia report, which covers the usage of non-textual multimedia resources, such as audio, video and images; and the ability to look at usage statistics for specified date ranges depending on the library's needs.
