R5.1 is the latest update to COUNTER for tracking and reporting usage. Reports have started processing in January 2025. Official compliance with R5.1 begins February 2025 and will be available in Sitemanager February 14 (when Jan 2025 has finished processing). We will be able to access all 2024 reports in COUNTER 5.0. R5 reports will still be available until April 2025 unless users choose to extend, and users will be able to pull usage ranging from January 2022 to March 2025. 

COUNTER4 Reports have been eliminated in January 2025.

Platform, Database, Title, Item Reports, and the metrics (Investigations, Requests, Searches, and Denials) are the same in COUNTER R5.1. What has changed is a focus on items (individual chapters, sections, open-access materials, etc.), more data types, a change in attributes (ex. The Section_Type attribute is removed in R5.1), and upgrades to SUSHI and JSON. Data_Type is also now required.

Item investigations and requests will now include the number of chapters or sections within a book when that book is downloaded. That number will be the count for the item investigations or requests when the book is downloaded. The title investigations and requests will remain the same. Therefore, users can compare title investigations and requests over the years, but not item investigations and requests.

The concept of "whole book downloads" has essentially gone away for COUNTER 5.1. If a whole book is downloaded, each chapter in the book would get an item level request. If a single chapter is downloaded, that chapter gets an item level request. There are no indicators to differentiate a chapter request as coming from a whole book download or single chapter download. All of these requests get rolled up to the book title in the Title Report and the platform in the Platform Report. However, the Access sites don't currently have a feature to download a whole book.

 Item requests and investigations for book segments (like chapters) will increase.

Here is an example. A whole book PDF is downloaded. If there are 15 chapters/sections in a book, then a request for each section in the book is reported.

Multimedia:

If the multimedia is standalone, we report it as the applicable Data_Type - Sound, Image, Audiovisual, Interactive_Resource, Multimedia. If the multimedia is static like an image, the page view is considered an item request. If the multimedia is playable, the page view is an item investigation, and the item request is counted whenever play is clicked.

The multimedia types are Audiovisual (aka video), Sound (aka audio), and Image.

Multimedia that is it's own section in a book (like inline/embedded multimedia) will be reported as a book section (aka a chapter)

To summarize, the changes within R5.1 as it relates to our McGraw Hill Professional products are as follows:

• Focus on Items (resulting in higher counts for books)
• Better definitions for Access Types
• Expanded data types (books, videos, etc.)
• Simplified SUSHI reporting
  • Replacing IP setup with API keys setup
  • Ability to check if a service is working
• Data can be broken down into categories
  1. 1. Controlled: Available to subscribers
     2. Open: Available to anyone
     3. Free to Read: Temporarily available to anyone
• Silverchair will maintain COUNTER 5.0 reports in parallel for three months after we start processing 5.1.
• Silverchair will stop processing 5.0 reports after the March 2025 reports are available. 

Important notes about COUNTER in general:

• Zero usage is not shown
• If information is unavailable, the fields will be blank
• Use the Title Report instead of Standard Views for a complete picture of usage
• Use the Title metrics to accurately compare R5 and R5.1 data

FAQs

Q: Would a user need to download each chapter of a title in order for it to be counted as a whole book download, or is it just one chapter that counts for a whole book download?
Since MGH titles are not available by whole book download. And are section downloads broken out?

A: The concept of "whole book downloads" has essentially gone away for COUNTER 5.1. If a whole book is downloaded, each chapter in the book would get an item level request. If a single chapter is downloaded, that chapter gets an item level request. There are no indicators to differentiate a chapter request as coming from a whole book download or single chapter download. All of these requests get rolled up to the book title in the Title Report and the platform in the Platform Report.

There is one exception, but it should not impact MGH if they don't have whole book downloads. Some clients have whole books that are PDF/Epub/Mobi only and don't have known sections that we can report individually. In that case, the whole book download is treated as a single item request.

Q: How are downloads of other MGH non-book content, such as images, infographics, offline videos, etc. counted?

A: If the multimedia is standalone, we report it as the applicable Data_Type - Sound, Image, Audiovisual, Interactive_Resource, Multimedia. If the multimedia is static like an image, the page view is considered an item request. If the multimedia is playable, the page view is an item investigation, and the item request is counted whenever play is clicked.

Q: Will downloading a full issue PDF still result in a single usage count regardless of the number of 
articles in the issue?

A: In the current system, a full issue is reported as a single count. In the new system, a download will 
be logged for each article within the issue, so counts may go up. 

Q: Does 5.0 data also need to be archived locally as with the 4.0?

A: Not as far as we know right now. If this changes in the future, we'll give you plenty of runway to 
archive historical reports. 

Q: Will these changes to the reporting (particularly standalone multimedia) also account for materials 
being published via Composer?

A: No, Composer content is not reportable per COUNTER guidelines

Q: We are already harvesting COUNTER 5 reports via SUSHI. In order to harvest 
the COUNTER 5.1 reports, will we need to set up a new SUSHI connection separate from our 
COUNTER 5 connection?

A: The institutional admin can use their old identifiers (API key, requestor_ID, customer_ID). The 
only change to the API call will be adding /r51 to the API call, e.g., sitemaster.fakedomain.com/sushi/r
51/reports

Q: We typically measure our usage on a fiscal year basis (July - June). From 
your perspective as a content provider, will it be acceptable, for the year July 2024 - June 2025, for 
us to add up our COUNTER 5 usage from July - December 2024 and our COUNTER 5.1 usage from 
January 2025 - June 2025 in order to obtain our full year's usage?

A: Institutional admins will need to be prepared to do some data interpretation. For example, the 
counting methods for things like books/chapters will change between COUNTER 5 and 5.1, as will 
the handling for controlled (paywalled), free, and OA content. For that specific FY range, our 
recommended options are below. 
July 2024 – Dec 2024 with COUNTER 5.0, and Jan 2025-June 2025 with COUNTER 5.1
OR July 2024 – March 2025 with COUNTER 5.0 (since we must keep offering 5.0 for a few 
months), and April 2025-June 2025 with COUNTER 5.1