COUNTER is an international initiative serving librarians and publishers by setting standards that ensures vendors and publishers can provide their library customers with consistent, credible and comparable usage data. IEEE makes this data available to our institutional customers via a COUNTER-compliant usage statistics site to help subscribing institutions better understand how their users access content in the IEEE Xplore digital library.
IEEE is an active participant in COUNTER, and we have worked diligently to ensure compliance with this latest release. New reports are now available on the IEEE usage statistics site.
A few important details to note about the new COP5 reports:
- There is a new URL for accessing the COP5 reports, which is https://c5ieee.mpsinsight.com/ieee/login. To access the site, use your current COUNTER4 login credentials. The new site will also contain all your current COP4 reports.
- Article Requests by Type Report: This custom report from IEEE is still available and is still the most comprehensive view of usage activity for IEL subscribers. It includes usage activity for all journal, conference, and standards documents.
- Unique Items: COP5 reports introduce “Unique Item” counts as a metric, which will only count usage of a specific document once in a user session even if the user views the document in multiple formats such as PDF and HTML.
- Total Item Request: This metric will report on all usage per session for each document across various content formats such as PDF and HTML. Total Item Request reports likely represent the closest approximation to prior COP4 based statistics for comparison purposes but there are still differences due to new calculation logic and processing rules.
- COP5 Processing Rules: The COP5 reports have several differences in the counting logic, which may make it challenging for libraries to compare current COP5 and past COP4 data. These differences in the rules used for processing data include more restrictive double click filtering and omitting views of open access content. for certain reports such as the new TR-J1.
Please note: Besides using the new URL, you do not need to do anything to switch over to COP5. For more information on some of the highlights and changes to expect in your new reports, please visit:
- The IEEE Xplore Resources and Help pages – for helpful user guides and instructions on how to access IEEE usage statistics reports.
- COUNTER – You can also access more detailed information and guides on the COP5 metrics by visiting the COUNTER website.
Additional Changes to Note in COP5 Reports:
The chart below outlines come of the changes in terminology between the COP4 and new COP5 versions of several of the most popular customer usage reports.
| COP4 Report | New Equivalent COP5 Report |
| Article Request by Type: Custom report that provides a Summary of Total Customer Usage of Full-text Article Requests by Type. This is the most comprehensive most useful usage report we offer to our customers. Includes all content types including journals, conference, standards, eLearning and eBooks. | Article request by Type is a Custom report that is still available with metrics updated per the new COP5 requirements |
| Journal Report 1: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal | Journal Requests (Excluding “OA_Gold”) (TR_J1) |
| Journal Report 2: Access Denied to Full-Text Articles by Month, Journal and Category | Journal Access Denied (TR_J2) |
| Journal Report 3: Number of Successful Item Requests by Month, Journal and Page-type | Title Master Report (will show comprehensive information about activity across all metrics for entire titles, which may be books or journals. Includes information for Journal Report 3) |
| Journal Report 4: Total Searches Run By Month and Collection | Eliminated (no equivalent) |
| Journal Report 5: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Year-of-Publication (YOP) and Journal | Journal Requests by YOP (Excluding “OA_Gold”) (TR_J4) |
| Book Report 2: Number of Successful Section Requests by Month and Title | Book Requests (Excluding “OA_Gold”) (TR_B1) |
| Book Report 3: Access Denied to Content Items by Month, Title and Category | Book Access Denied (TR_B2) |
| Journal Report 1 GOA: Number of Successful Gold Open Access Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal | Journal Usage by Access Type (TR_J3)
Reports on usage of journal content for all metric types broken down by “Access Type“ (i.e. “OA Gold” vs “Controlled”). Also includes Total Items, Unique Items and Investigations |
| Consortium Report 1: Number of Successful Full-Text Journal Article or Book Chapter Requests by Month and Title | Eliminated in COP5 (IEEE still offers our own custom consortia report: “Requests by Consortia Member”) |
For details, please visit the COUNTER website at http://www.projectcounter.org/.
