COUNTER 5.1 Item Reports in CELUS

CELUS has recently introduced support for the full Item Report. This makes it possible for users to
get data on the finest possible level of granularity and enables new use cases. On the other hand,
it puts extra demands on the consistency of the data.

Data consistency

When considering the most common use case where IR is used to split usage from the journal level to
individual articles, there is a clear connection between IR and TR reports. The TR must represent
the summed up usage of all articles in the journal from the IR report.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. In fact, this is true for a minority of platforms.
This means that when data from IR and TR are shown side by side, there are obvious inconsistencies.
In CELUS we strongly feel that the data consistency is of primary importance and we want to provide
our users with the best possible data.

For this reason, we have implemented a mechanism where we check the consistency of the data from IR
and TR for each platform. And we will only allow harvesting of IR data for platforms which were
whitelisted by this mechanism.

Whitelisting process

In order to whitelist a platform, we do the following:

1. We check the COUNTER registry for the platform and check if it supports both TR and IR reports.
If only IR is supported, we will whitelist the platform for IR. We do not whitelist platforms
 outside the registry.

2. We harvest data from IR and TR for the platform using 5 different sets of credentials. If we don't
 have any functional credentials, we will not whitelist the platform for IR.

3. We compare the data from IR and TR for consistency:
     

    a. We check if the total usage from IR and TR is the same.
b. We check that the list of titles from both reports is the same - including title IDs like ISSN, DOI, etc.
     c. We check that the usage of each title is the same in both reports.

4. If the data is consistent for all 5 sets of credentials, we whitelist the platform for IR.
5. If the data is inconsistent for any of the credentials, we do not whitelist the platform for IR.


This process is done in the background and the whitelisting information is updated periodically.
Platforms may both become whitelisted in time or have the "whitelisted" status removed. At the
moment, we check the consistency of the data every month.

We expect to improve this process in the future and pass our feedback to COUNTER and the providers.
At present our main objective is to provide the best possible data to you - our users.

 
How to check if a platform is whitelisted?

When you edit you credentials, if the IR report is automatically selected or if you can manually
select it, it means the platform is whitelisted for IR.

In the opposite case, the IR will be listed among the report types, but it will be grayed out and
a frowning face icon will be shown next to it.

    

Cloning credentials

When cloning credentials from COUNTER 5 to COUNTER 5.1, we will take the whitelisting information
into account. If the original credentials used the IR_M1 report type and the platform is whitelisted
for IR, we will clone the credentials to use the IR report type. If the platform is not whitelisted
for IR, we will omit the IR report type from the cloned credentials.

Questions?

If you feel that a platform should be whitelisted, please contact us and we will check it. If you
have any questions or feedback, please contact us at ask@celus.net.