NEWS RELEASE - First vendors announce COUNTER compliance

["Gillingham Emily" <Emily.Gillingham@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com>]

**First vendors announce compliance with the COUNTER Code of Practice**

Blackwell Publishing, ISI and Oxford University Press have announced that
the online usage reports they supply to customers now comply with Release
1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice. All three companies have signed formal
declarations of compliance and the list of usage reports covered by each
publisher may be found on the COUNTER website at
http://www.projectCounter.org

Jill Cousins, Product Manager for Blackwell Synergy, said "We are
delighted to be amongst the first publishers to offer COUNTER-compliant
data.  We see this as a significant step to making sure online journal
usage is transparent to librarians and comparable across different titles
and subject areas."

Martin Richardson, Publishing Director of Oxford University Press
Journals, said "As a pioneer of the COUNTER initiative, OUP is proud and
delighted to be one of the first publishers to make COUNTER compliant
usage statistics available for its online journals. The COUNTER initiative
fits well with our goal of providing the library community with the
functionality and feedback they tell us they need, and we look forward to
supporting the continuing development of the COUNTER Code of Practice over
the coming years."

A number of other leading vendors have declared their intention to become
COUNTER compliant in the course of 2003 and are working towards this goal.
They include:

American Institute of Physics	            
BMJ Publishing Group            	
CABI International			
EBSCO				
Elsevier Science			
Extenza
Ingenta
Institute of Physics Publishing	
Nature Publishing Group
Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins
HighWire Press

___

>From May 2003, a definitive list of COUNTER-compliant vendors will be
maintained on the COUNTER website. Only vendors and usage reports
included on this list should be regarded as being COUNTER compliant.

Peter Shepherd, COUNTER Project Director, said "We are thrilled that some
vendors have already been able to comply with the Code of Practice and
look forward to this number growing rapidly over the coming months. We
anticipate that, by the end of 2003, customers will be receiving
COUNTER-compliant usage reports covering a significant proportion of
journal and database vendors."

For more information, please contact:
Peter Shepherd
Project Director - COUNTER
pshepherd@projectCounter.org <mailto:pshepherd@projectCounter.org>