Alma Analytics – How to find and view a specific COUNTER report which was loaded to Alma and is reflected in Alma Analytics

There are sometimes cases where a user views COUNTER usage date in Alma Analytics and may wonder why the data appears the way it does.

For example he or she may think that in actuality there is more (or less) usage than what is reflected in Alma Analytics.  Or, he or she may have downloaded a report from a vendor site which shows different usage for the same period and same resource than what is reflected in Alma Analytics.

When this is the case it is possible download the COUNTER file from Alma which was previously loaded and see what the data in the report is.  This can remove all doubt about Alma Analytics perhaps not displaying data as it should.

For example below we have a report in the Usage Data subject area displaying COUNTER Release 5 usage data for journal “American Ceramic Society” ISSN 00027820.  The only filters are:

• “Usage Date”.”Usage Date Year” = ‘2019’
• “Title Identifier”.”Normalized ISSN” = ‘00027820’
• “Load File”.”Load File COUNTER Release” = ‘R5’

Here is the criteria tab

Here is the results tab.  The user wonders why January is missing from the report.

In order to see that actual COUNTER report or reports that were loaded for this resource we can add the “Load File ID” to the report.  We can see here that this resource, for the criteria we have applied, has one Load File ID: 3025989410003596

Now we will take this load file ID, 3025989410003596, and retrieve it in Alma at “Acquisitions > Import > Load Usage Data > Retrieve by load file ID > Actions > Download”:

Now we have the COUNTER report on our PC and we can see what months appear and what is the usage for each month.  In this case the COUNTER report clearly states that includes from February to December 2019 (which is exactly what Alma Analytics has).  It does not have January.

Note also that COUNTER release 5 does not use “zeroes”.    See

COUNTER Release 5 Draft Code of Practice FAQs

R5 reports will not include zero usage

Frequently asked questions from content providers about the Code of Practice Release 5

Including zero usage for e-books and journals creates two challenges that make it impossible to offer comparable and consistent reporting.