[Eril-l] How do you manage your COUNTER SUSHI API credentials (customer_id etc.)

Fri May 2 09:35:18 PDT 2025

Re: Registry: I hadn't planned on it because it would require the Name to match what the Registry has in either Abbreviation or Platform name, and I'm not sure users would want that (and a lot of the abbrevs are blank<https://registry.countermetrics.org/>). I have a separate python program that pulls down the Registry data into a tsv, but I'll revise it to be suitable for this purpose.  I am including in github (of course open source, lol!) a template tsv with the Base URLs of all of UPEI's vendors at least, along with which among the credentials are required.

We certainly would appreciate that last suggestion about providers updating us proactively re our credentials. At least one vendor/provider forces an annual change, I think in the api_key. Even just an email reminder to get the update when the change is forced would be useful. I think some providers (and even some librarians) consider the credentials akin to passwords and wouldn't want to send them in email cleartext.

I'll definitely announce here when I'm ready for the formal release, hopefully by the end of this month, and probably offer an open webinar about it.

If anyone is brave enough to try it in "beta", and knowing that I have yet to add IR report support and a simple GUI, you are welcome to poke around the python code and my first-draft documentation - https://github.com/Melissa-Belvadi-Library-Projects/C5.1_Harvester.  You'll need to install python if you don't have that already. (If you don't, you may not be an ideal beta tester.) But it does seem to already be creating the tsvs correctly - I tested against the COUNTER validation tool and hand-checking several against vendor-provided reports.

Melissa Belvadi
mbelvadi at upei.ca
Make an appointment: https://mbelvadi.youcanbook.me/
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Hi Melissa,

I’m glad that you are releasing a COUNTER 5.1 harvester. I assume it will be open source, like the previous version you created. ❤

I now use CELUS and am delighted with it, so am not the core audience for your question.  That said, when I was configuring my instance of your COUNTER 5.0 harvester, we did use a spreadsheet to organize and store our SUSHI credentials.  At the time, I was less familiar with SUSHI credentials, and the process and format were quire manageable.

Will your new tool pull in the Base_URL and other information from the COUNTER Registry<https://registry.countermetrics.org/>?

Wild idea for any vendors listening: it would be extraordinarily useful for you to send the SUSHI/COUNTER API credential/info to your eResources Librarian contacts annually or whenever you make changes or expire account credentials.

Appreciatively,

Athena

Athena Hoeppner (she/her/hers)

Interim Associate Dean, Resources and Discovery

Discovery Services Librarian | University Librarian

University of Central Florida | athena at ucf.edu<mailto:athena at ucf.edu>

Schedule Appointment<https://outlook.office.com/bookwithme/user/e7ed510b338643a092fb237960b6be17@ucf.edu/meetingtype/V46-JYn9vEWmqVPIUyuevA2?anonymous>

From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> On Behalf Of Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list via Eril-l
Sent: Friday, May 2, 2025 11:15 AM
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Subject: [Eril-l] How do you manage your COUNTER SUSHI API credentials (customer_id etc.)

Hi, all.

I am somewhat close to releasing my COUNTER 5.1 harvester. Just to make sure I'm making something that people can actually use, it would be helpful for me to have a sense of how you record/maintain your API credentials.  Right now I'm assuming people would be able to populate a "tsv" (tab-delimited) file, eg in Google Sheets or Excel then export as tsv.

Someone I showed this to expressed skepticism about that assumption. So I figured I'd just ask you all.

If you are downloading all of your COUNTER reports using the vendors' interactive dashboards, you might not be recording your SUSHI creds at all. In that case, if this is something that interests you, I'd ask you if my tsv plan would be workable for you.

To give this a bit of context, here are the column heading for the relevant data you'd need to maintain:

Name  Base_URL    Customer_ID Requestor_ID      API_Key     Platform    Version     delay retry

The first 3 are the only COUNTER-required ones, and my program also requires Version which is just "5.1".

Thanks in advance for any responses!

Melissa Belvadi

Collections Librarian

University of Prince Edward Island

mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca>  902-566-0581

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4433-0189

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