The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the
availability of NISO SUSHI Protocol: COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile
(NISO RP-14-201X) for a public comment period ending on January 20, 2012.
This Recommended Practice provides a practical implementation structure to
be used in the creation of reports and services related to harvesting of
COUNTER Release 4 reports using the NISO SUSHI Protocol.

The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting (SUSHI) Protocol was issued as
a standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93) in 2007 to simplify and automate the
harvesting of COUNTER usage reports by libraries from the growing number of
information providers they work with. COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of
Networked Electronic Resources) is an international initiative that
published their first Code of Practice in 2003 and issued Draft Release 4 of
the COUNTER Code of Practice for e-Resources in October 2011. The comment
period for the COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile and COUNTER Release 4
end on the same date. XML schemas supporting the draft Implementation
Profile and draft Release 4 of the Counter Code of Practice have also been
published by NISO for review during the comment period.

The new draft Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice is a single,
integrated Code of Practice covering journals, databases and books, as well
as multimedia content. This COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile supports
the changes in Release 4 and was developed with the intention that it could
be used by COUNTER auditors to verify compliance of a content provider's
SUSHI server.

The NISO SUSHI Protocol: COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile, the
referenced schemas and additional implementation guidance for SUSHI can be
found on the SUSHI webpages at: www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/. The draft
Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice is available on the COUNTER
website at: www.projectcounter.org/code_practice.html.

Cynthia Hodgson
Technical Editor / Consultant
National Information Standards Organization
chodgson@niso.org
301-654-2512