The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the
publication of the COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile (NISO RP-14-2012).
The new 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 Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of
Practice for e-Resources in April 2012. XML schemas supporting the
Implementation Profile and Release 4 of the Counter Code of Practice have
also been published by NISO, which has an agreement with COUNTER to maintain
the schemas and keep the SUSHI and COUNTER schemas in synch.

“The creators of the SUSHI standard and the COUNTER XML schema were forward
looking and created products that could handle future needs,” explains
Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist for E-Resource Access and Management Services
at EBSCO Information Services and Co-chair of the NISO SUSHI Standing
Committee that developed the Implementation Profile. “Accommodation of such
future growth requires a level of abstraction and flexibility to be built
in, but that can result in decisions by implementers that could cause
interoperability issues or require client implementers to customize the
service for every different provider. The COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation
Profile was developed to provide guidance with Release 4 of COUNTER by
setting out detailed expectations for both the server and the client of how
the SUSHI protocol and COUNTER XML reports are to be implemented to ensure
interoperability.”

“SUSHI implementation became a COUNTER compliance requirement with Release 3
of the COUNTER Code of Practice,” states Bob McQuillan, Senior Product
Manager at Innovative Interfaces, Inc. and Co-chair of the NISO SUSHI
Standing Committee. “The new 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.”

“Adoption of the SUSHI protocol continues to grow,” states Todd Carpenter,
NISO Executive Director. “Supporting recommendations such as this
Implementation Profile will simplify and expedite the implementation of
SUSHI while further ensuring interoperability.”

The COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile (NISO RP-14-2012), the referenced
schemas, and additional implementation guidance for SUSHI can be found on
the SUSHI webpages at: www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/. 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

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