Re: Archival Access (was EMBO Journal + EMBO Reports / expired access)

[Ivy Anderson <ivy_anderson@harvard.edu>]

Bernd-Christoph's posting also highlights one of the core issues that
remains to be addressed in the current environment:  how perpetual rights
to online content will be fulfilled when journals change ownership.

Despite the fact that such rights are frequently guaranteed by contract
(with or without caveats for situations in which the publisher / licensor
is not the copyright holder and may not be legally empowered to make those
guarantees), in reality these provisions are as often honored in the
breach as in the observance.  The nature of the specific license
commitments (or, frequently, their lack of specificity) makes this less
than straightforward.  The ALPSP document makes a good start at outlining
the issues and describing potential solutions (and is the only document to
my knowledge that has attempted to address this problem), but more needs
to be done.  Developing industry standards and best practices for the
fulfillment of these rights is fast becoming a critical need.

Ivy Anderson
Digital Acquisitions Program Librarian
Harvard University Library
1280 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 404
Cambridge, MA 02138

voice:  617-495-3724
fax:      617-495-0491
email:   ivy_anderson@harvard.edu


At 03:22 PM 3/10/2004 -0500, Bernd-Christoph Kaemper wrote:

> I also find it irresponsible that until today I have received no answer
> from either the publisher or the society to the question about permanent
> access to paid content for this journal which was guaranteed as long as
> the journal was published by OUP but is now in the limbo as NPG's standard
> institutional site license does not acknowledge such archival rights, cf.
> my message to liblicense-l and lis-e-journals of Feb 18, 2004 (Fwd: RE:
> EMBO Journal / Archival access to paid-for content). It now has happened
> what was to be expected: former subscribers no longer have access to
> content of 2003 they paid for.
>
> OUP supports the guidelines from ALPSP ('When a society journal changes
> publisher', www.alpsp.org/socjourn1.pdf) and told us that the issue of
> archival access to paid-for content ('perpetual access')  in respect of
> The EMBO Journal was highlighted during the hand-over discussions between
> OUP and NPG, but NPG and EMBO do not seem to care.
>
> [...]
> --
> Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Dipl.-Physiker, Bibl.-Rat
> Fachreferent f�r Physik und Koordination elektronischer Ressourcen
> Universit�tsbibliothek Stuttgart, Postfach 104941, 70043 Stuttgart
> Tel +49 711 121-3510, Fax +49 711 121-3502, kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de