RE: Aggregator Embargoes -- more info

["LENARES,DEBORAH A." <LENAREDA@apci.com>]

I would like to reinforce one of the points that Mr. Price of Bell &
Howell has made.

We in the library community should be very concerned with Ebsco's
"Preferred" Exclusive contracts with publishers.  These contracts give
Ebsco the exclusive right to include the publisher's articles in their
full text database, thus creating a monopoly on the information in this
format.

I do not believe Ebsco's claims that these exclusive contracts have been
initiated by the publishers.  In fact, one publisher told me that Ebsco
was putting pressure on them and trying to create the fear/threat of
"print erosion" to help close the deal.

We should all be very concerned with this development.  I would like to
thank Bell & Howell and Gale for not following Ebsco's lead.  If all
database publishers pursued exclusive contracts with publishers we would
really be in a difficult position.

Sincerely, Deborah Lenares

-----Original Message-----
From: Price, Vince [mailto:vince.price@bellhowell.infolearning.com]
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2001 6:16 PM
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: FW: Aggregator Embargoes -- more info


I would like to respond to the claims made about ProQuest on embargoes and
halted titles.

ProQuest includes a total of just 72 titles with embargoes. Embargoed
titles represent less than 2% of the 4,000+ active full-text titles in
ProQuest. Of the 72 embargoed titles, 60 have an embargo of less than one
year and 45 are less than 30 days.

ProQuest Research Library includes 25 embargoed titles out of more than
1,600 full-text sources--less than 2% of the titles. And 12 of the 25 have
embargoes of less than 30 days. The competitor's database lists 1,268
embargoed titles. This represents nearly 50% of the full text in the
database. Further, 73% of these titles carry an embargo of one year or
more.

Regarding peer-reviewed content, both databases have nearly the same total
number of active, non-embargoed, peer-reviewed titles. However, 42% of the
full text in Research Library is non-embargoed, peer-reviewed content
compared to only 28% from our competitor. This disparity has a major
impact on the quality of reverse chronologically sorted hit lists for the
user.

There are also claims made about halted titles in our database. More than
1,100 publisher participate in our electronic publishing programs.
ProQuest has a much larger base of publishers than its competitors.
Recently, a few of these publishers have granted limited exclusive
("preferred") rights for their titles to another vendor. It is suggested
that the exclusives are initiated by publishers in the interest of
managing print erosion. We disagree.

First, publishers manage print erosion through embargoes, not exclusives.
A publisher can just as easily set an embargo on all aggregators as with
one. Second, these preferred agreements exclude only a couple of specific
competitors.  There remain vendors that provide the titles in aggregated
databases to libraries. If publishers are pursuing exclusives to manage
print erosion, they would exclude all aggregators, not just a two or
three. The limited exclusive agreements are a product of extraordinary
financial offers to publishers to persuade them to remove content from
competing databases. The goal is to damage competitor products and
restrict access to the content. The result is limited access and a higher
cost structure.

We work to win subscribers by improving our databases, not by restricting
content access and limiting library choice. We are actively working with
publishers to maintain and add the high quality content that our customers
expect and deserve. Watch for announcements about several new publisher
agreements that will bring hundreds of scholarly titles our subscribers.

Vince Price
Vice President - ProQuest Marketing
Bell & Howell Information and Learning
Ph: 800-521-0600
Fax: 734-761-4700


-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Brooks [mailto:SBrooks@epnet.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 7:23 PM
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: RE: Aggregator Embargoes -- more info



The competing database mentioned below has a lot more than 10 titles with
embargo periods.  You may only find 10 listed as embargoed on their title
lists, but that's because they are not indicating the embargo period for
all titles with embargoes.  In fact, for the vast majority of titles with
embargoes, I can find no such notation on their title lists.  I'm not sure
why they would show some and not others.  This is the database vendor's
decision though - I'm just commenting on this because of the resulting
false comparison below.  However, if you contact the publishers, they will
likely be very clear that the embargoes are indeed there - whether they
are shown in the database vendor's title lists or not.

The other part of the comparison that was left out is the number of
"halted" titles in each database ("halted" means that while indexing is
ongoing, full text is halted).  Surely someone concerned about embargoes
would be even more concerned about halted titles.  In most cases, EBSCO
has a small fraction of the number of halted titles that are found in
competing databases.

It's important to note that comparing the numbers of titles in a database
(embargoed or not) does not allow librarians to measure the quality of
sources included.  In an academic library, should "Radio Control Car
Action" or "Humpty Dumpty's Magazine" be valued above quality peer
reviewed journals that have an embargo period?  In the case of the two
versions of Academic Search and the competing database Donnie mentioned
below, according to the web sites, here is a comparison which should be
considered:

DATABASE				A	B	C	D

Academic Search Premier		2205	7	55	2143

Academic Search Elite		958	4	45	909

Competing Database*		669	101	12	556

A = Total peer reviewed full text journals
B = Number of "Halted" titles (indexing continues, full text is halted)
C = Number of publications which have ceased naturally or changed names
D = Total number of Active, Ongoing full text peer reviewed journals

* The evaluation of the competing database was done on April 11, 2001.  
The numbers may have changed since then.

This chart does not indicate the number of journals which have been
completely removed from these databases (by publishers).  Those numbers
would be very surprising to most librarians.

Academic Search contains many journals from leading academic publishers
who had never before worked with aggregators.  It also contains many
journals from publishers who had previously worked with many aggregators
but experienced subscription cancellations, and as a result are now more
selective/careful about licensing their content.  Therefore, it does
contain more embargoed titles than competing databases.  However, it also
contains many more ongoing, full text peer-reviewed journals than
competing databases.

Sam Brooks
Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing
EBSCO Information Services

-----Original Message-----
From: Donnie Curtis [mailto:dcurtis@admin.unr.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 6:16 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Aggregator Embargoes -- more info


Some additional information about EBSCO's embargoed titles:

- EBSCOhost MARC records for individual titles now have notations about
  embargo periods.
- The information I shared is for Academic Search Premier. For Academic
  Search Elite, 440 of 1444 titles (29.8%) have embargo periods of 3
  months or longer. 295 (20.4%) have embargo periods of 12 months or
  longer.
- Liblicense-l subscribers were actually notified of the EBSCO practice by
  Sam Brook, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for EBSCO, in
  March:  "...some journals that don't now have embargoes may have
  embargoes in the future ..." I think we are starting to experience that
  future.

Sam Brook said "Many full text journals in aggregated databases have
embargo periods." How many seems to depend on the database. The ProQuest
Research Library (Core and all modules) has 10 titles with an embargo
period longer than 30 days.

Donnie Curtis
University of Nevada, Reno