In scholarly publishing, one of the ways to measure a return on investment is to assess circulation and usage statistics. COUNTER is an industry-wide standard made for counting the use of electronic resources.  The second draft of Release 5 will be incorporating significant changes in response to the feedback received from both publishers and librarians through a survey.

Besides, a UKSG seminar was held on the same subject on 17 July 2017, and you may download the slides as well as these resources:

The Friendly Guide to Release 5 for Providers

Transition Timeline

E-book usage: counting the challenges and opportunities (Insights article)

Some publishers strive to improve their metadata with the goal of providing a better discovery experience. Mike Roberts describes Emerald Publishing’s extra step: publicizing its improved metadata using product-specific checklists and NISO’s Open Discovery Initiative (ODI).

In many disciplines, data are highly decentralized across thousands of online databases (repositories, registries, and knowledgebases). A group of US scholars outline 10 lessons they have learned about the identifier qualities and best practices that facilitate large-scale data integration. Specifically, they propose actions that identifier practitioners (database providers) should take in the design, provision and reuse of identifiers.

LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries, and OCLC Research are launching a collaborative project.  The organizations will examine the research information management (RIM) practices in three European national contexts—Finland, Germany and The Netherlands—with close attention to the adoption and integration of persistent identifiers (PIDs) and their role in supporting disambiguation and interoperability.

The Permanent UNIMARC Committee meets once a year, usually at the UNIMARC Strategic Programme venue, in Lisbon, Portugal. The report about the 2017 meeting is available online.

IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM) dated March 2017 is now available. This version has been reviewed after a world-wide review. It is awaiting endorsement by IFLA Professional Committee.

The Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice aims to solve problems in the information supply chain by improving the exchange of metadata from content providers to knowledge bases. The KBART Standing Committee has been working to increase adoption of the recommended practice and add more content providers to its list of endorsers.

The content provider community is invited to participate in a survey regarding the use of KBART, ease of adoption, and opportunities for training and outreach. The survey will be available until June 15.

Stella Griffiths, Executive Director of the International ISBN Agency, looks at the reasons for the longevity of ISBN as it approaches 50 years. The article also outlines the work towards the revision of the ISBN Standard and the challenges that ISBN currently faces.

Since the initial launch of Handle.net, we have seen a proliferation of persistent identifiers (PID) addressing many use cases. Some PID systems have become established parts of the science information infrastructure. In other areas we see work in progress, and new use cases being proposed. This special collection of papers discusses the architecture of PID systems, their adoption and application, and new use cases.

The members of the ICEDIS Committee – EDItEUR’s special-interest group for serials standards – met on the final day of the UKSG Conference, on 12th April. ICEDIS is nearing 30, and this will be the opportunity to explore its continued relevance against a vastly changed subscriptions landscape, with business models, processes and stakeholder groups all very different from those in place in the late 80s. Another topic on the agenda: Getting the most out of ONIX-PC. Discussions will address how to encourage producers to create ONIX-PC files and how to add other downstream users of the information.