Re: manifest assent

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

I have had similar difficulty with almost all publishers in obtaining from the
web sites:

o Lists of published serials titles, with prices
o Lists of titles with years of electronic availability
  (some of this information for these is on the individual pages for each 
  title, once you get there, one by one, but they usually don't have an
  overall list)
o Lists of latest issues published, in print or electronic.
o Names, email addresses, and phone numbers of individual poeople who deal
  with technical or administrative problems, or to call when access
  doesn't work--I know these change but the virtue of the web is that it
  can keep up with those changes.
o Lists of the best urls for access to content of particular titles for
  the various routes of access

As Ann says, 
> Where searching was possible, it was for specific journal titles. 

I know there are some honorable exceptions to all of these.

There is also the problem of currency. For licensing information in
particular, this list has recently seen a statement from one of the
largest publishers that the information given on many journal pages is not
correct.

David Goodman
Biology Librarian, and
Co-Chair, Electronic Journals Task Force
Princeton University Library
dgoodman@princeton.edu         http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/
phone: 609-258-3235            fax: 609-258-2627

__________________________

Ann Okerson wrote:

> One is almost tempted to re-name the subject header of this discussion
> thread "Where's Waldo?"  I took Kimberly's list below and went to each of
> the three publishers' "terms and conditions" or "license." Having read the
> license (no comments here on the contents of any of the three licenses, as
> that's not the point here), I then stripped back the URL to the company's
> basic URL, pretending that I was visiting it as a librarian who was
> interested in licensing the title and finding the terms and conditions
> from the home page.
> 
> This was a task!  I've annotated each of the three examples (all major
> publishers) describing briefly my search for Waldo.  My overarching
> comment is: these were hard to find and had I not known the licenses were
> there I might never have found them.  I.e., you need help for this.  Such
> relative obscurity contributes to the problem Kimberly identifies. At the
> least perhaps we could ask publishers to make sure that their web sites
> offer a clear and easy path to terms and conditions for gaining access to
> their e-titles?  In no case did I find a suitable search capability on the
> home page, so there was no quick way to find the needed information.
> Where searching was possible, it was for specific journal titles.  The
> point here is:  we are speaking of legal contracts.  They should be easy
> for the reader or purchaser to find.
> 
> See comments below marked with ##.
> 
> > Examples I can do.  The ones below are ones that I can find scrambling in
> > my files.  So some may be perfectly acceptable and others may have
> > language that people would want to modify.  No distinctions made here.
> >
> > http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/terms.html
> 
> ## Go to the T&F home page at:  http://www.tandf.co.uk/
> o Click on the link "About Taylor & Francis"
> o Doesn't get you far, so try the link "Our Publishing Program"; no, so
> o Click on "Journals" -- but no licensing information, so
> o Try "Ordering" -- nope that's not the one, so
> o Try "Online Journals" -- aha! at the bottom of a list of links and
>         at the top of that page, one gets to terms and conditions!
> 
> > http://www.sagepub.com/shopping/journal_online.asp#Licence
> 
> ## Go to the Sage home page at:  http://www.sagepub.com/
> o None of the links on the left side of the home page seem right, so
> o Try "Journals" listing, which is ... only a journals listing
> o Try "Advanced search" -- nope, doesn't help
> o Try "Customer Service Info" but that's just an address & phone no.
> o Try "Permissions" -- nope, not there.
> o Ah, here's a link called "Advertising Info. Journals On-Line Survey"
>   Turned out that that's three separate links; not divided by a line
>         as the other Sage main links on home page, so you need to
> o Try "Journals On-Line" and there at last is a link to Terms and
>         Conditions!
> 
> > http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/static/online.htm#Terms
> 
> ## Go to the basic URL:  http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/
> o Discover that the "Search" feature is only for specific titles, so
> o Try "Ordering" -- nope
> o Try "Electronic Products" -- looks promising?  then
> o Scoll down to "Electronic Journals of Print Versions" -- then
> o Try clicking on the link called "Online Journals Information"
> o AHA!  A link to "Terms and conditions!"  You are there.
> 
> There must be ways to improve on the situation and if these three
> responsible publishers, with very fine home pages are typical, then
> many others will give up their licenses no more easily.  The LIBLICENSE
> web site has a link to publisher licenses, but under the assumption
> that these were easily found, we stopped updating these links a year
> or more ago.  Perhaps it's time to start again.
> 
> Ann Okerson/Yale University
> Ann.Okerson@yale.edu