Re: Wiley EAL license

[bernd-christoph.kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de]

I concur. The multi-site definition of Wiley is less than
helpful.  I have ranted about this last year on this list and on
lis-e-journals, when they wanted to inflict their unworkable
definitions also on those sites that had existing agreements with
Blackwell. It is not helpful at all if institutions that formerly
were treated as single-site by Blackwell are now suddenly
considered multi-site by Wiley-Blackwell.

Wiley-Blackwell - please wake-up and offer conditions that are
workable, especially during the current recession.

This is exactly the kind of flexibility that ICOLC asked for in
its latest Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and Its Impact
on Consortial Licenses The principles suggested there are not
only valid in the consortial context.

Principle 1:  Flexible pricing that offers customers real
options, including the ability to reduce expenditures without
disproportionate loss of content, will be the most successful.
In stable times, standardized pricing and terms may work
relatively well.  Today, purchasers will be under heavy pressure
to reduce their outlays and need solutions that let them do so
while continuing to offer as much content and service as
possible.  It is in the publisher's best interest that we avoid
all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave-it decisions and options, whose
lack of flexibility is likely to result in far greater damage
than is absolutely necessary.

Principle 2:  It is in the best interest of both publishers and
consortia to seek creative solutions that allow licenses to
remain as intact as possible, without major content or access
reductions.  Content, once discontinued, will be very difficult
to reinstate at a later date. While there may be practical limits
to this principle, publishers, authors, scholars, and libraries
will be best served by those solutions that retain as much access
to as much content as possible.

And Linda,

by all means, if a publisher is unflexible in this way, just get
out of the contract and cancel all what you can, including
duplicates if you still have any. But talk to your university
library board first, and get their approval. We did this in a
similar case with another publisher several years ago, and we got
unanimous approval for our steps. There was a clear willingness
to accept a period of reduced access in exchange for a
sustainable system.

Let some time go by, and the publisher will finally recognize
that you don't bluff, and that the subscriptions aren't coming
back. After cutting back, you'll have more money for sustaining
subscriptions by publishers who cater better for the needs of
their customers, or for buying monographs. And one day, may be,
the publisher will offer you either a more flexible deal, or you
may be able to reenter a favorable package deal (collection deal)
on a much reduced spending level. I can say, it worked for us and
we have a much more efficient collection now than had we
continued under the previous, unsustainable model.

In the meantime, your researchers will get the content they need
through other channels: ILL, document delivery, asking the author
or getting help from a colleague at another university, and so
on. Don't worry. It's not the end of the world, if you have to
cancel a lot of subscriptions from one of those big publishers.
Concentrate on deals with publishers who offer effective
collections and are flexible enough to accomodate your needs.

For another heads-up, see the Norwegian libraries who also had
similar quarrels with this publisher, cf.

UB breaks with publisher
http://nyheter.uib.no/lib/utskrift.php?meldingstype=engelsk&id=35023&medium=nettavis

Blackwell vs. Norway
http://chronicles-of-richard.blogspot.com/2007/03/blackwell-vs-norway.html
Norwegian University libraries reject e-jounal offer from Blackwell
Publishing due to unacceptable conditions
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3541.html
Blackwell journals available once again in Norway
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0703/msg00210.html

(The last item of course doesn't disclose all terms of the agreement.) So
successful negotiations are possible, and you don't have just to accept
what they offer on standard terms.

Best regards,
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library
and Wiley-Blackwell Consortium, Baden-Wuerttemberg

----- Original message -----
Von: "Hulbert, Linda A." <LAHULBERT@stthomas.edu>
Datum: Mittwoch, Mai 27, 2009 7:28 am
Betreff: Wiley EAL license

> Dear license gurus (please excuse the duplicate postings)
>
> Another company is looking at the Elsevier model and using it.
> Unfortunately, unlike Elsevier where a library might get more
> content than they could pay for and unlike Elsevier which does
> not require that a library participate, Wiley is requiring all
> multi-site libraries to have a no-cancellation, minimum life time
> spend.  Add insult to injury, we are not a multi-site library by
> any other vendor's definition!  But Wiley has designated us so.
> Without recourse.
>

<snip>