Re: Update from Multi-Science Publishing

["Hildegard Schaeffler" <schaeffler@bsb-muenchen.de>]

Dear colleagues,

For more background information on the Knowledge Exchange tender 
please see http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=227

Best regards

Hildegard Schaeffler (on behalf of the KE licensing working group)

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Dr. Hildegard Schaeffler
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Leitung Referat
Zeitschriften und Elektronische Medien /
Head of Serials and Electronic Media
D-80328 Muenchen
E-mail: hildegard.schaeffler@bsb-muenchen.de
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"Okerson, Ann" <ann.okerson@yale.edu> 29.08.08 04:12 >>>
Through the transom and of possible interest.  Anyone know more
about the European Knowledge Exchange Project?

______________________________________________________

From: Paul Bailey [mailto:paul@multi-science.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 4:23 AM
To: librarians@scholarlycommunication.org
Subject: RE: News from Multi-Science Publishing

Dear Colleague,

As a publisher, I have a keen interest in Open Access - at one
level, the more people who see my content and can make use of it,
the better. However, I have little faith in the presently mooted
ways forward for Open Access. 'Author Pays' will not work;
funding by philanthropic bodies fails the necessary long term
test; as does the concept of setting up countless 'alternative'
OA journals. Here, I want to describe a promising initiative we
are engaged with, and to outline a way of quickly going much
further.

We have been invited to participate in Knowledge Exchange (see
www.knowledge-exchange.info) which is a consortium venture
between the national libraries of Germany, Denmark, the
Netherlands and the UK, whereby our content - having been
validated by Knowledge Exchange - is being offered to all the
universities in those countries, under the terms of Knowledge
Exchange's licence, which is devised with the universities
interests at heart, of course. Some countries will provide the
content to the universities in their country by means of a
national licence; others will provide matching funds for those
universities which decide to opt-in. Not only does the licence
protect the universities position, the pricing structure is
extremely favourable: under some scenarios the
price/journal/institution/year is about $25!

So, its quite a good OA start, to make our content available to
all those universities, and higher education institutions, at
such an eminently affordable price.

But we would like to go a lot further, partly from OA enthusiasm,
and partly because so much of our content is essentially applied
science and potentially has a much wider audience than university
researchers.

Ideally, we would like to see national licences, perhaps
organised and funded by a country's national library (or national
digital library) so that any national of that country can access
our content, at no cost at the point of use: free to users, in
short. This is technically straightforward; the licence cost will
be affordable. Most importantly, as trail blazing deals are made
between Multi-Science and progressive national bodies, other
publishers will feel the commercial need to follow, which opens
up the possibility of countries acquiring vast amounts of
excellent information, at negligible cost, for the benefit of all
their citizens.

You can find out more about our company and publications at
www.multi-science.co.uk and you can see specimens of content,
tables of contents, abstracts, at
www.ingentaconnect.com.content/mscp

I hope this is of interest, and would be pleased to hear any
comments you might have. If you personally are in a position to
drive matters forward, do please contact me; feel free to forward
this message to colleagues who may also be interested.

Best wishes
W Hughes
Director
Multi-Science Publishing Co Ltd