Open access monographs have a distribution problem that has nothing to do with making the books free. The books are free, in most cases. The trouble is that nobody counts their readers the same way twice. One open access title can sit on OAPEN, JSTOR, Project MUSE, Google Books, a university repository, and the press's own website. Each system logs a download, a view, a session, or a page turn using its own definitions. For a librarian deciding what to renew, a publisher justifying a book processing charge, an author building a promotion file, or a funder measuring policy impact, those inconsistencies leave the most basic question about an open access book unanswered: did anyone actually read it?
The open access monograph usage data standards initiative is the umbrella term for a series of related efforts trying to replace that inconsistency with a shared reporting framework. It sits at the intersection of library acquisitions, university press economics, and research evaluation. The most developed pieces come from Project COUNTER, the OA eBook Usage Data Trust, Curtin University's Book Analytics Dashboard, and the Open Book Futures programme.
Why Monograph Usage Data Is a Harder Problem Than Journal Metrics
Journals solved a version of this problem years ago. Project COUNTER publishes the Code of Practice that defines metrics such as total_item_requests and unique_item_requests. The current Release 5 arrived in 2017 and took effect from January 2019. Thousands of journal platforms comply because libraries and funders expect it; a journal usage report from one vendor can be compared with another.
Books never enjoyed the same discipline. The monograph itself is a slower, longer object, and its readership often involves partial reading rather than article-level downloads. Open access book publishing adds a further complication: the same book travels through several independent platforms, each with its own analytics. The data does not disappear, but it remains fragmented and impossible to aggregate without a common set of rules.
The OA eBook Usage Data Trust and the Push for Shared Rules
The OA eBook Usage Data Trust, steered by University of Michigan Press and Curtin University with partners including OAPEN, JSTOR, Project MUSE, LYRASIS, and Project COUNTER, ran a multiyear consultation that produced a final report in 2023. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the work. The report did not ask for another proprietary analytics product. It proposed a community-governed data trust: an independent body that would collect, normalize, aggregate, and share usage data under rules approved by libraries, university presses, platform operators, and funders.
The word trust carries weight. Unlike a vendor dashboard, a data trust places stewardship with a neutral group, with governance rules for who can access what and for what purpose. That matters because raw usage data can reveal institutional identities and reading patterns. A researcher studying a sensitive topic may not want their institution's download logs opened to a commercial publisher. The trust model attempts to make the data useful without making it exploitable.
Here's the catch
The standard is only as strong as the least cooperative platform. During the pilot, some publishers and aggregators provided data and others supplied partial files or stayed out entirely. A usage data standard cannot compel participation the way a funder mandate can. If a major platform remains outside the system, the aggregated picture has a hole in it. The missing platform is rarely the one nobody uses.
Small open access book publishers face a particular squeeze. Many already wrestle with the diamond open access funding crisis, relying on library memberships and grants instead of author fees. Adding formal usage reporting can feel like another compliance burden with no immediate revenue. Unless funders or consortia pay for that reporting, the standard risks becoming another cost that lands on small presses.
Then there is the definitional problem. A download is not a read. COUNTER metrics count requests, not comprehension. Bots inflate counts. A chapter view can mean a five-second detour or a careful reading. The initiative uses COUNTER-compliant definitions precisely because they are auditable, but those definitions were built for library purchasing decisions, not for proving scholarly influence. Researchers tempted to turn usage counts into a new impact factor for books should be cautious.
The Book Analytics Dashboard Shows What Shared Data Could Look Like
The work has moved beyond a design document. Curtin University's Book Analytics Dashboard, developed with the COPIM project and continued under the Open Book Futures programme, aggregates COUNTER-compliant usage data from a growing group of participating publishers and platforms. A user can look up a single open access book and see downloads, views, geographic distribution, and month-by-month trends across the sources that have agreed to share data. The dashboard is free to use and the underlying approach is deliberately open.
Open Book Futures runs from 2023 to 2026 with funding from Arcadia and Research England. The dashboard is the proof of concept: it turns abstract standards into a working interface. But coverage is partial by design. Publishers opt in. Some large aggregators are represented; others are not. A standard that depends on opt-in remains a standard with a participation problem.
Who Needs This Data and Why
Academic libraries use usage reports to decide which open access monograph programmes deserve renewal. Funders use them to test whether open access policies produce readership, not just compliant deposits. University presses use them to demonstrate that a book processing charge bought something real. Early-career researchers use them in promotion files to show that a book reached readers beyond their own institution.
The stakes rose in January 2024, when UKRI's updated open access policy made open access monographs a condition of funding for long-form outputs. That policy, explained in UKRI open access monographs policy, gives UK-funded researchers a direct reason to care about usage reporting. Humanities scholars have long complained that citation metrics treat books as afterthoughts. A shared usage standard could give hiring and tenure committees a finer-grained picture, but only if committees agree on what the numbers mean. That agreement remains years away.
Hype Versus Reality
Reality check: the initiative has produced a governance model and a working dashboard. That is real. It has not produced universal coverage, mandatory reporting, or a widely accepted book-level metric. On substance, the work deserves credit; on adoption, it is still early.
Anyone expecting this to settle arguments about scholarly quality will be disappointed. Anyone looking for a cleaner way to compare the reach of open access books across scattered platforms will find the foundations in place. The next two years will test whether participation expands from a pilot coalition to the broader ecosystem. Project COUNTER continues to maintain the Code of Practice, and the Open Book Futures programme will keep the dashboard running through 2026. The decisive question is whether funders and library consortia start writing standardized usage reporting into their agreements.
Lucy Montgomery, who leads the Curtin group behind the dashboard, has framed the work in the clearest terms throughout the project: the goal is not to build a scoreboard for books. The goal is to give the people who write, review, publish, fund, and preserve open access monographs a shared picture of who is reading them. The standard will not matter because it is elegant. It will matter if libraries and funders ask the same question, in the same way, and expect an answer on the same terms.
