What is SUSHI?
SUSHI is a protocol developed to automate the retrieval of COUNTER usage reports into local systems from SUSHI-compliant providers like Social Explorer. Without SUSHI, you would have to manually download usage statistics from our admin panel.
You can enable access to SUSHI at your library through its electronic resource management system or other usage statistics reporting services. More about how to implement the SUSHI protocol can be found on the Project Counter website.
*Social Explorer offers SUSHI reports compliant with COUNTER Release 5 and Release 5.1.
Getting started with SUSHI
To set up SUSHI requests, you will require your administrative usage statistics credentials:
- Base or Server URL:
https://www.socialexplorer.com/sushi/r51for Release 5.1, orhttps://www.socialexplorer.com/sushifor Release 5 - Customer ID: your institution's Social Explorer account code
- Requestor ID: your personal Social Explorer account code
*No API Key is required for Social Explorer.
How to find your usage credentials
- If you are already able to access usage statistics directly from the Social Explorer site using your individual account, click your avatar (your photo or initials) in the bottom-left corner of the sidebar. Your organization's name appears at the top of the menu; click it to open the admin panel.
- Your Customer ID, Requestor ID, and both SUSHI URLs (SUSHI URL and SUSHI URL R5.1) are listed in the SUSHI API tab.
*Please contact us if you don’t have access to these credentials.
SUSHI Request URLs
You may be required to include the Social Explorer API endpoints when setting up the SUSHI protocol in your usage statistics service. The table below shows the four endpoints available on the Social Explorer SUSHI API. Each endpoint is designed as per the COUNTER Code of Practice.
| Path | Social Explorer URL | Description |
| GET /status |
https://www.socialexplorer.com/ sushi/status |
Returns the current status of the Social Explorer SUSHI R5 service. |
| GET /reports | https://www.socialexplorer.com/sushi/reports | Returns a list of the COUNTER R5 reports supported by Social Explorer. |
| GET /reports/{report_id} |
https://www.socialexplorer.com/ sushi/reports/{report_code} |
Report request. Please refer to the Project COUNTERs SUSHI API for sample SUSHI request. /reports will return a list of the report codes supported on Social Explorer. |
| GET /members | https://www.socialexplorer.com/sushi/members | Returns a list of the institution accounts that are members of a consortium account on Social Explorer. |
The table shows the Release 5 URLs. For Release 5.1, add r51 after /sushi, for example https://www.socialexplorer.com/sushi/r51/reports. Each release returns reports in its own format.
SUSHI Parameters and Attributes
You can use the following parameters to construct a SUSHI request URL from Social Explorer's API:
| Name | Description |
| report_type | Which SUSHI report |
| customer_id | Institution the report is for |
| requestor_id | Who is making the report request, must be an administrator of the Institution |
| begin_date | Usage start date in the form of yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-mm |
| end_date | Usage end date in the form of yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-mm |
To understand what SUSHI requests look like, see the COUNTER_SUSHI API (Release 5) or the SUSHI section of the COUNTER Release 5.1 Code of Practice.
For more details, please refer to the COUNTER R5 Code of Practice section 8.0 SUSHI for Automated Report Harvesting.
For guidelines, error handling, and exceptions, please see Appendix F of the Release 5 Code of Practice.
Looking for a COUNTER 5 overview? For more information on Social Explorer's COUNTER 5 implementation, please visit our Usage Reports Overview: COUNTER 5 page.