(21 Apr 2026) It wasn’t until libraries around the world started pulling their 2025 COUNTER reports that we had good evidence for the zero-click conundrum. When comparing 2025 with 2024, libraries started reporting major changes in usage patterns. At the same time as publishers were reporting significant spikes in raw usage, they and their library customers were seeing a noticeable decrease in human usage in COUNTER reports.
Rather than organic human engagement, we originally thought that the spikes in raw usage data might indicate agentic activity, either from publishers’ own tools, third-party systems, or even researchers’ custom-built agents. Further investigation backs up that supposition. Libraries that licensed AI tools, like (but not limited to!) ProQuest’s Research Assistant or Google’s Gemini, seemed to be experiencing larger COUNTER usage drops than libraries who still encouraged students and faculty to use their licensed content directly.
COUNTER’s mission is to bring the knowledge community together around a standard that ensures usage metrics are consistent, credible, and comparable across platforms. As an open standard, we’re signatories to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. That means if we’re no longer needed, we will take responsible steps to transition or wind down our operations.
Within the context of AI-driven behavioral shifts, we needed to ask if COUNTER is still useful. Do libraries, consortia, publishers and technology providers need us in a zero-click environment? The answer was a resounding YES. If anything, in our new AI world there is an even greater need for normalized metrics.
Read more here.
