COUNTER Code of Practice coming soon

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

**COUNTER Code of Practice to be released on 14 January 2003**

COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) is a
multi-agency project whose objective is to develop a single,
internationally accepted, extendible Code of Practice that will allow the
usage of online information products and services to be measured more
consistently.

At its meeting on 5 December 2002 the COUNTER Steering Group agreed the
text of Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice, which is now being
prepared for publication on the COUNTER website
(http://www.projectCounter.org), where it will be released on 14 January
2003.

The Code of Practice specifies in detail the requirements that vendors
must meet to have their online usage reports designated COUNTER-compliant.
There will be only one valid version of the Code of Practice at any given
time, but different levels of compliance will be possible. Release 1 will
focus on journals and databases, as these products are not only the most
significant budget item for libraries, but also they have been available
online for some time and have a core of well-accepted definitions and
content structures. The Code of practice will be systematically extended
to cover other categories of publications, such as e-books.

COUNTER is actively supported by the international community of librarians
and publishers, and by their professional organisations, including:

AAP, Association of American Publishers
ALPSP, The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
ARL, Association of Research Libraries
ASA, Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries
BIC/EDItEUR
JISC, Joint Information Systems Committee
NCLIS, National Commission on Libraries and Information Science
NISO, National Information Standards Organization
PA, The Publishers Association
STM, International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers
UKSG, United Kingdom Serials Group

The development of COUNTER is being supervised by an Executive Committee
chaired by Richard Gedye of Oxford University Press. The Project Director,
responsible for day-to-day management is Peter Shepherd
(pshepherd@projectCounter.org), who should be contacted for further
information.

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