Re: Blackwell Policy

[Carole Richter <Carole.J.Richter.8@nd.edu>]

Selden,

For most publishers the idea is not that you are licensing content for the
year (which then should logically be prorated) but that you are 'buying'
the electronic version for the year...you *own* the full year of access
regardless of what you decide to do in the future. The publisher is
'committed' (in a sort of vaguely convincing way---in 'some' format, and
if the titles aren't sold) to maintaining access to what you now own. Now
we realize that one or two years permanent electronic access would be
pretty worthless if we went back to print, being able to access only a
couple isolated years electronically. But their point is that you have the
entire year available for access from the time of subscription. This has
been pretty standard--it surprised me too at first, but they do have a
reasonable point from their perspective. If you only wanted the
subscription to begin in say Sept, with access to commence from that point
in time that might be reasonable too, but it would no doubt add a lot of
custom configuration requirements at the publishing end.

Index-to-content aggregators such as EBSCO or Gale, logically prorate from
the point of subscription because you subscribe to what there 'is' at any
point in time. That's true for any indexing service. With the actual
electronic version of the full journal, you If you want the subscription,
it seems somewhat reasonable to bite the bullet and provide a full year of
access. Obviously it would be nice to have the option, though.

Carole Richter
Electronic Resources Coordinator
University of Notre Dame Libraries
(219)631-8405
richter.8@nd.edu

_______________________________

At 08:28 PM 4/1/2001 EDT, Monica Metz-Wiseman (ADM) wrote:
>
>On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Selden Durgom Lamoureux wrote:
>
>> Last fall we initiated a conversation with Blackwell Science (which later
>> included Blackwell Publishing) for their electronic journal package.
>> Their pricing and content are attractive.  But they just sent us the
>> license this month, and with it the news that their policy requires a
>> January - December subscription year and prohibits them from prorating.
>>
>> I have a strong initial reaction to this, but insufficient experience to
>> judge wisely.  Do other publishers have and exercise such policies for
>> their electronic packages, or is Blackwell outside the norm?
>>
>> -Selden