COUNTER is an independent cross-publisher code of practice for reporting the usage of online resources. Complete documentation is available on the COUNTER website.
Supported releases
We provide data in release 5.1 format from January 2025. We generate usage data in the release 5.0 format until March 2025. From April 2025 onwards, for COUNTER 5.0, no new reports will be generated. Historical data will be still available in the Librarian Portal UI and via SUSHI API.
Downloading and harvesting
COUNTER data reports can be downloaded from the Usage page (C5.0, C5.1) on the Librarian Portal or harvested via SUSHI (C5.0, C5.1 - SUSHI info below the form). Our COUNTER data should be available three to seven days after the end of each month.
Available views and date ranges
We have usage data in COUNTER 5.0 format available from January 2016 onwards, and for the Release 5.1 from January 2025 onwards. However, the metrics that are available for each platform varies by time period.
C5.0 & 5.1 data audited
The Title Report for journals and eBooks on nature.com and Springer Nature Link are successfully audited as being COUNTER release 5.0 compliant. The Release 5.1 audit is in progress. To check the status of our compliance, visit the Counter Registry.
Supported file formats for reports
CSV, TSV and JSON.
Limits for number of months included in one report
There are no limitations. Be aware though, that the files can get quite big if you add several months.
1. Download the COUNTER 5.0 or 5.1 data that you need.
2. Download the KBART file that you need.
3. Combine both files in different sheets of an Excel file. Remove the “header” from the COUNTER file, that is all rows up to and including the empty row under “Created_By SpringerNature"
4. Go to the VLOOKUP function support page on support.microsoft.com and look for the heading "Combine data from several tables onto one worksheet by using VLOOKUP”.
“The field that links the tables” referred to in the VLOOKUP article is:
- In the KBART data, the column “title_id”
- in the COUNTER data, the column “DOI"
Follow the steps in the article to get the combined datasheet that you need.
Only the COUNTER titles that exist in the KBART sheet should then be shown in the combined datasheet.