Introduction. SUSHI: simplifying the delivery of usage statistics

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1 SUSHI: simplifying the delivery of usage statistics 23 Learned Publishing, 20, SUSHI: simplifying the delivery of usage statistics Oliver Pesch Introduction Since its conception in the summer of 2005, NISO s Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative, also known as SUSHI, has been the subject of many articles. One common theme to these articles is the declaration that SUSHI shows great promise as a protocol that simplifies the delivery of journal usage statistics. While this declaration may ring with promise for some, for others it also invokes many questions. Is delivery of usage statistics really a problem? Why is it that suddenly usage statistics have become so important? What about Project COUNTER? Wasn t it supposed to resolve the usage reporting questions? What possible benefit can SUSHI have to a publisher? How much will it cost? This article may not answer all of these questions, but it will attempt to provide enough background to resolve many and to give the reader a better understanding of not only why SUSHI is necessary, but also how SUSHI (and providing usage data in general) can actually work to a publisher s advantage. We will also talk about the effort level in introducing SUSHI; frankly, it s not all that complicated. The rise of interest in usage data The increased interest in the collection of usage data for online resources is a natural outgrowth of the success of the online format for journals (and now books). When library collections were predominantly composed of print titles, circulation and shelving statistics were gathered and evaluated as part of the collection-management and decision-making processes. Libraries were responsible for managing their budgets effectively; and one measure of success was to ensure they were spending money on utilized resources.thisisjustastruewithonline collections as with print. Providing usage data was not always the SUSHI: simplifying the delivery of usage statistics Oliver PESCH EBSCO Information Services Oliver Pesch 2007 ABSTRACT: In 2005, SUSHI became the latest buzzword in the library community. This article (and this kind of SUSHI) refers to usage data, not raw fish. The growth of online collections has resulted in libraries demanding that publishers provide detailed usage data to allow them to better manage their collections and purchases. The Project COUNTER Code of Practice was created in response to this need; however, it did not address the painstaking task of collection and management of the usage data. SUSHI is a new protocol developed to allow for automated retrieval of COUNTER usage reports from publishers and other content providers. Oliver Pesch

2 24 Oliver Pesch Figure 1 there was alackof consistency in the usage data norm. In fact, in the early days of online journals, some publishers were concerned that if the libraries knew how infrequently the online formats were accessed, they would cancel them. (Fortunately those days are mostly behind us, and the online format is rapidly becoming the preferred format.) In the late 1990s, the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) tackled the issue of lack of usage data by creating their Guidelines for Statistical Measures of Usage of Web-based Indexed, Abstracted, and Full Text Resources, which they asked vendors and libraries to endorse. This effort helped reinforce the need for publishers and aggregators to provide some level of usage data; however, it was soon discovered that there was a lack of consistency in the usage data subsequently made available both in its preparation and its presentation. In 2002, Project COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) was formally created to address these issues. The COUNTER Code of Practice (COP), now in its second release, is endorsed by the publishing community. The COUNTER COP provides very detailed specifications on how to process usage data, what activities to count, and precisely how thereportsaretobeprepared.thesuccess of COUNTER has proven to be a major step forward for standardizing usage data for e-journals. The number of publishers offering COUNTER-compliant reports is substantial and growing. The need for SUSHI So,why,ifCOUNTERishavingsuchapositive effect, is there still a problem? The problem stems from the overall success of online resources. Where libraries previously may have been dealing with a small number of publishers offering online journals, they now face the daunting task of obtaining usage data for dozens, and in some cases, hundreds of publishers. Retrieving the usage reports is only part of the battle: for usage data to be effectively analysed, it needs to be consolidated for comparison. Anyone who has attempted to merge a few similar spreadsheets into one can attest to the challenge. Now, imagine if you had to do this for hundreds of spreadsheets an intimidating task to be sure. In an effort to deal with the growing complexity of managing all this usage data, a number of library system and service vendors began developing a new type of application the usage consolidation service. Figure 1 presents the theory behind the usage consolidation services being offered by many library automation vendors. The library uses the usage consolidation service (1) to import the usage reports gathered from the various content providers (2).

3 SUSHI: simplifying the delivery of usage statistics 25 Figure 2 This usage data is stored in the application s database (3) and organized by title, package, publisher, etc., and supplemented with cost and other information, with the help of the E-Resource Management System (ERM) knowledge base (4). Once all the usage has been imported for a given month, the library uses the reports interface (5) to create consolidated usage reports (6). These consolidated usage reports help show what journals are being used, how often, and at what cost. (Cost-per-usage is a metric that is being used as a key influencer in the collection development decision-making process.) Figure 1 makes this all seem very simple; however, as often is the case with what appearstobesimple thereismoretoit than is shown. Figure 2 shows a more realistic view of what is involved in importing usage reports. Each content provider s site must be accessed, reports requested and generated, then downloaded to the library s servers, and finally imported into the usage consolidation application. Often the actual importing must be preceded by cleansing of the data minor reformatting of the report, adjusting title names or ISSNs, etc. All of this, which must be repeated for each content provider, consumes a great deal of time and energy. SUSHI was created specifically to solve the very problem of retrieving and cleansing the usage reports. The inaugural meeting of what would become SUSHI was held in July 2005 when Ted Fons, senior product manager, Innovative Interfaces; Adam Chandler, information technology librarian, Library Technical Services, Cornell University Library; Tim Jewell, director, Information Resources, Collections and Scholarly Communication, University of Washington Libraries; and the author (Oliver Pesch, chief strategist of e-resources, EBSCO Information Services) met to discuss the problem and explore technological solutions. The goalwastocomeupwithasimpleyeteffective solution that would have low barriers for implementation. The committee was expanded in the weeks that followed, and SUSHI went from a concept to a working pilot in a matter of three months. The rapid development of SUSHI and its success stem from a principle that all committee members share: to focus on the problem at hand and keep the solution simple. This principle has guided the committee to leverage the work of others as much as possible. COUNTER had already defined the reporting needs for e-journals and had been experimenting with an XML (Extensible Markup Language) format. Web services and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) are being used extensively in many industries to solve business-to-business (B2B)

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6 28 Oliver Pesch Figure 3 The need for usage statistics goes far beyond a library s collection decisions application needs. As SUSHI was being designed for computer-to-computer interaction without human intervention, the traditional B2B approach made sense. The result was that SUSHI would be a relatively simple Web service that could deliver a COUNTER Journal Report 1 in XML format to a usage consolidation application on demand. Figure 3 shows the progression of our usage consolidation application with the introduction of SUSHI. The role of SUSHI is to allow the usage consolidation application to leverage the ERM knowledgebase, which knows where usage can be obtained, to automatically harvest the statistics on a regular schedule without any human intervention. What s ahead for SUSHI The early pilots of the SUSHI protocol proved successful. The initiative is now overseen by NISO, which introduced SUSHI as a draft standard for trial use in September The goal is to have SUSHI become an official NISO standard in In the meantime, SUSHI is in production at a growing number of content provider sites. In summary, SUSHI is a simple requestresponse protocol. The client application connects to a SUSHI server at the content provider s usage site and requests a report for a customer. The SUSHI service processes the usage data, formats the report in XML and returns it to the client application, which then loads the usage data into its database. All of this is done seamlessly and without human intervention. To learn more about the SUSHI technology, please visit the SUSHI website ( committees/sushi/sushi_comm.html) where you will find recently recorded Webinars describing the SUSHI protocol. SUSHI s benefit for the publisher Up to this point, this article has stressed why libraries need the usage data and how the COUNTER Code of Practice and technologies like SUSHI can be very beneficial to the library. What may not be as clear is how SUSHI (and COUNTER for that matter) can also benefit publishers. It often feels like these new advances do littlemorethanincreaseapublisher scostof doing business. So what is the advantage for thepublisher?astheworld sleadingsubscription agent, EBSCO has the opportunity to talk to many publishers. One common theme that publishers convey is the importance of usage data and, in particular, how to increase usage. The need for usage statistics goes far beyond a library s collection decisions. There is talk about usage being added as another dimension in determining journal impact factors. Some higher-education insti-

7 SUSHI: simplifying the delivery of usage statistics 29 tutions are considering adding usage data to other existing criteria, such as impact factors and citation counts, as a means of evaluating faculty and the influence of their writings. Some publishers are evaluating usage numbers internally as a means of measuring the success of their journals and the editors of those journals. These are all good reasons for a publisher to track usage in a clear and consistent way; however, this does not really address the real benefit of COUNTER and SUSHI to the publisher. The bottom line is that libraries are examining and incorporating usage data in the management of their collections and the timing of their purchase and cancellation decisions. Only by making it easy and efficient for libraries to obtain the usage data can a publisher ensure that their data will be included in the analysis and that journals are fairlyevaluated.thisisparticularlytruefor smaller publishers since libraries with limited resources may only have time to obtain the traditional usage reports for journals from the publishers from which they receive most of their journals. If the smaller publishers are represented at all, it may be through the library s use of click-through counts from the library s proxy server or A-to-Z lists to provide guesses for the usage of the remaining journals in their collection. If a library is using cost-per-use (the annual subscription cost for a journal divided by the number of articles downloaded for the journal) as a criterion to seek out journals that are candidates for cancellation, then a publisher will not want their journals to be undercounted. SUSHI offers a way for publishers to deliver their usage to libraries in an automated way; virtually no effort is required on the part of the library. In addition, COUNTER compliance ensures a high level of credibility for these usage statistics. The next obvious question is, How hard is it for a publisher to implement SUSHI? The simple answer is, Not very hard at all. SUSHI is built on standard technologies and is a very simple protocol to implement, mainly because what it is intended to do is very simple retrieve a customer s usage data from a content provider. SUSHI was built with the full understanding that success will come through simplicity and ease of implementation. The protocol has been kept simple and focused and uses standard technologies familiar to many developers. The SUSHI committee has also worked hard to assist developers by providing resources, such as sample applications, developer toolkits and discussion lists. If a publisher already has the capability to produce COUNTER-compliant reports, making that service SUSHI-compliant can be done in as little as a week. Publishers who take advantage of hosting services like MetaPress or Atypon, or who use statistics management services like Coremetrics SurfAid Analytics, may discover that their usage data can already be provided through SUSHI. SUSHI: the answer for both libraries and publishers SUSHI is well on its way to becoming a NISO standard and has the potential to revolutionize the way libraries gather and process their usage statistics. For the library, it means accurate data, easily obtained, to help with collection development and other management decisions. For the publisher, it means that their journals can be fairly represented in any usage analysis their customers perform. Resources ICOLC guidelines for web statistics: yale.edu/consortia/2001webstats.htm SUSHI website: SUSHI_comm.html (SUSHI Webinars are also available at the above site.) Project COUNTER website: Coremetrics SurfAid Analytics website: coremetrics.com/surfaid/ Oliver Pesch Chief Strategist, E-Resource Access and Management Services EBSCO Information Services 5724 Hwy 280 East Birmingham, AL 35242, USA opesch@ebsco.com Oliver Pesch is chief strategist of e-resources at EBSCO Information Services, overseeing the technical direction for EBSCO s EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service (EJS), EBSCO A-to-Z and LinkSource products. He is currently co-chair of the NISO SUSHI working group and was recently re-elected to the NISO Board of Directors.

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