RE: Librarians push back against complicated e-packages

["Jeremy Eng Siong TEO" <Jeremy_TEO@nlb.gov.sg>]

Perhaps the pro-rated refund clause is not the direct answer to Peter's
highlights of difficulties in getting publishers to connect to e-serials
systems. This problem arises mainly before the database service is even
started, whereas the pro-rated refund clause takes care of the period when
the database service becomes live. It is true that substantial resources
are needed to ensure that the publishers' contents are accessible from our
front-end systems. Perhaps the answer could be to pool university
resources for connection jobs as well, since this is repetitive from the
publishers' point of view and may account for their lack of response.
Another way of pushing publishers to work is to agree on a set of
connection standards among libraries, and then list the publishers who are
compliant with agreed connection standard and those who are currently not
-- and make this available on the academic librarian organisation website.
In this way publishers can be made aware that non-compliance will affect
their entire market.

As for pro-rated refund clauses, "Big-Deal" licenses may well dilute the
effect of this clause if the pro-ration is also based on the proportion of
the unavailable serial against the rest of the serials available -- the
more unwanted serials there are, the less refund will be available. A
modified form of pro-rated refund clauses could instead take only the
serial titles used in the past 12-months (and weighted according to the
level of usage) as the base of calculating the pro-ration -- in this way
the missing serial is only pro-rated against the actual serials used. Of
course this will depend on (i) the existence of a prior contract; (ii) the
publisher having provided the serials usage reports; and also (iii) the
fact that there are no sudden changes in serials usage by the customer's
users. 

Jeremy Teo
Legal Officer National Library Board of Singapore 

(The views expressed in this email are entirely the writer's and do not
reflect any official views of the writer's organisation)

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"Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>@lists.yale.edu on 23/06/2003 09:45:43 AM
To:    <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Subject:    RE: Librarians push back against complicated e-packages

> Perhaps you need a clause in your contract allowing for a prorated refund
> in the event access is not possible due to circumstances within the
> publisher's or vendor's control?  If you lose access a quarter of the
> time, why not ask for a quarter of your money back?

I push for such language in our licenses on a regular basis, almost always
successfully.  As long as I emphasize that I'm not going to ask for a
_full_ refund, but only a refund for the amount of product that I paid for
up front but didn't end up getting, they usually agree.

-------------
Rick Anderson
rickand@unr.edu