Scitation Now Compliant with COUNTER Release 2

MELVILLE, NEW YORK, 23 February 2006—The American Institute of Physics (AIP) is pleased to announce that its Scitation Usage Report Service (SURS) (www.scitationreports.org) is now fully compliant with Release 2 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Journals and Databases. AIP became Release 1 compliant in May 2005, and now becomes one of just a handful of publishers to attain Release 2 compliancy. Project COUNTER is an international initiative that provides standardized guidelines for the measurement, creation, and distribution of online usage reports to institutional subscribers.

With Release 2, many new changes have been incorporated into the Scitation Usage Report Service, both on screen and in the system’s architecture. Those that will be most visible to users include:

New columns that identify the article’s platform and publisher
Separate columns for HTML and PDF full-text article downloads
A new header for XLS and CSV reports that list the report name, date, and institution name and account number
The option to view XML-formatted reports

“AIP showed its commitment to usage standards by becoming a Founding Member of Project COUNTER,” said Peter Shepherd, COUNTER Project Director. “So we welcome the fact that AIP is now officially Release 2 compliant, and that it is able to assist many of the science and engineering societies on its Scitation platform to also comply with the standards we’ve drawn up.”

COUNTER compliant reports are now available for January 2006 in a variety of file formats. All registered users will be notified each month as new reports are published; it is no longer necessary for users to specify the start and end date of each report. Usage data for each month will be available in every report, and a running total for the year will be provided.

Subscribers who already have a username and password to the Scitation Usage Report Service may use the same login to access the service. Subscribers who have not registered will soon receive an invitation to do so, complete with instructions.

The COUNTER-defined reports below are available for each subscribing institution, as well as for multi-site and consortia administrators.

Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal
Number of Successful Item Requests and Turnaways
Total Searches Run by Month and Service
Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Database
Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Service

The Scitation Usage Report Service is hosted by the San Antonio-based company Optimal iQ, an authorized COUNTER-compliant reports provider. “We’ve been impressed from the start with AIP’s concern for the accuracy of its usage statistics and with its dedication to quality control,” said Tom Charvet, Vice President of Technology at Optimal iQ. “Their push to include XML-formatted reports shows AIP’s willingness to go above and beyond the strict requirements of COUNTER 2.”

Scitation usage data that is Release 2 compliant is currently provided for journals published by:

American Association of Physicists in Medicine
American Association of Physics Teachers
American Institute of Physics
American Physical Society
American Society of Civil Engineers
ASME International
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
AVS: Science & Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing
The Electrochemical Society
International Centre for Diffraction Data
Laser Institute of America
The Institution of Electrical Engineers
The Society for Information Display
The Society of Rheology
Society of Exploration Geophysicists
SPIE: The International Society for Optical Engineering

Scitation is a division of the American Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit corporation chartered in 1931 to provide publishing and distribution services for scientific and technical societies. In addition to its own publications, AIP’s Scitation online platform hosts content from many of the world’s leading STM publishers.

Media Contact: Christine Orr

Phone: (516) 576-2484 Fax: (516) 576-2374 E-mail: corr@aip.org