About COUNTER Release 5 on Social Explorer
Social Explorer now offers COUNTER Release 5 (R5) reports compliant with the COUNTER Code of Practice. COUNTER 5 reports are available from October 2019 onward.
The COUNTER R5 reports are available through the usage statistics service in the Social Explorer Admin panel and Social Explorer’s SUSHI service. You will require an account with administrative access to procure the COUNTER reports for your library/institution. If you already have an individual account with access to usage statistics, you are not required to create a new one for accessing COUNTER 5.
For more information on how to access COUNTER reports, visit How can I see usage reports for my institution.
What is COUNTER?
Project COUNTER is a standardizing body that issues a Code of Practice for publishers and content providers to adhere to while counting usage of electronic resources. The code of practice ensures that libraries evaluate use in ways consistent across electronic resource platforms.
For more info visit: Friendly Guide to Release 5 for Librarians. This guide contains detailed information about report types, metrics, definitions, and other common questions. The information on this support page offers more explanations regarding what these metrics and definitions mean in the context of Social Explorer usage. Project COUNTER has also created a video series of Release 5 Foundation classes.
Report types available on Social Explorer
Following are the reports available from Social Explorer, with their corresponding definitions as provided by the COUNTER 5 Code of Practice:
Master Reports
- Platform Master Report (PR) – A customizable report that offers usage on all metrics and content types for Social Explorer, including full-text usage, investigations, and platform searches, and excluding federated searches.
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Database Master Report (DR) – A customizable report that offers usage on all metrics and content types for Social Explorer, including full-text usage, investigations, searches, turnaways, and federated searches.
Standard Views
- Platform Usage (PR_P1) – Reports on all usage summarized by Metric_Type.
- Database Search and Item Usage (DR_D1) – Reports on key Searches, Investigations, and Requests metrics.
- We removed Database Access Denied (DR_D2) since Social Explorer does not deny access to users.
Key terms and metrics
Social Explorer is a database of maps and reports for current and historical socioeconomic and location-based data. We are not a standard type of resource. Hence, after consulting with COUNTER members, we arrived at the conclusion that Social Explorer Host_Type is a Full_Content_Database. That means usage is reported as Total_Item_Investigations/Requests with Data_Type Database.
Most of the key terms and definitions are available in the Friendly Guide to Release 5 for Librarians. See the table below for a description of how Social Explorer has implemented support for COUNTER 5 metrics.
How do we count unique items?
Each variable in map application or set of tables in reports application has a unique identifier and each geo level has a unique identifier, so combining them together gives us the content ID to treat as an item.
Reports event list
In the reports application, each geo level is one item request.
| Social Explorer user action | COUNTER R5 metric |
| Opens report app | 2 search_automated / search_platform and 1 search_regular / search_platform |
| Opens Geographies tab | no events |
| Changes geo level | search_regular / search_platform |
| Adding FIPS codes | search_regular / search_platform |
| Opens the Tables tab | no events |
| Selects specific tables | no events |
| Searches tables by keyword | search_regular / search_platform |
| Adds premade reports | no events |
| Show results | item_investigation / item request |
| Metadata and documentation view | item_investigation |
| Adding/removing already selected geos or tables from the list | no events |
| Adding new geo level or new tables in the created report | item_investigation / item_request |
| Excel download | item_investigation / item_request |
| CSV download | item_investigation / item_request |
| SAS download | item_investigation / item_request |
| SPSS download | item_investigation / item_request |
| Opening of the saved report project | item_investigation / item_request |
Maps event list
In the maps application, each geo level and variable combination is a one-item request. For clarity, multivariable maps are treated as a single request.
Additional item_requests: New layers of data (user-uploaded data or added layer from layer library); Change over time, which provides new data such as percent change between two years.
| Social Explorer user action | COUNTER R5 metric |
| Change data – Category tab | search_regular / search_platform |
| Change data – All Data tab | search_automated / search_platform |
| Changes survey (Change data – All Data tab) |
search_automated / search_platform |
| Changes the dataset (Change data – All Data tab) |
search_automated / search_platform |
| Selects a table (Change data – All Data tab) |
search_regular / search_platform |
| Selects variable (Change data – All Data tab) |
item_investigation / item_request |
| Change data – Search | no events |
| Search for a specific term (Change data – Search) |
search_regular / search_platform |
| Variables selected on the search modal (Change data – Search) |
item_investigation / item_request |
| Selects a variable (Saved variables panel) |
item_investigation / item_request |
| Selects multiple variables (Change data – All Data tab) |
item_investigation / item_request |
| Create a report from the map | item_investigation / item_request |
| Add a layer from layer library | item_investigation / item_request |
| Upload point data | item_investigation / item_request |
| Change over time | item_investigation / item_request |
| Click on Side by side map (2 map view) | no events |
| Click on Swipe map (2 map view) | no events |
| Opening of the saved map project | item_investigation / item request |
| Databox – More info icon | item_investigation |
| Mask map data | no events |
| Filter areas by criteria | no events |
| Turning layers on or off (Map layers panel) |
no events |
| Satellite view | no events |