LWW journals and HighWire

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Of interest to many readers of this list.  How might we get some
enlightenment from LWW, who are supposed to be delivering their
journals both on HighWire and Ovid?   Ann Okerson

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 17:07:01 +0200
From: Peter van Laarhoven <P.J.B.M.van.Laarhoven@ub.rug.nl>
To: ann.okerson@yale.edu
Subject: LWW journals and HighWire

Dear Ms. Okerson,

The message below was sent today to the American Heart Association and
several other scholarly societies that publish their journals with
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, and host them on HighWire.

As the message states we feel more or less trapped, because the contact
addresses on HighWire's journal information pages take us to an LWW
representative, who routes our request to the OVID representative for our
country, who says he can only help us with access through Journals@OVID.

Could you help me find out, through the Liblicense list, if other
libraries, particularly those from Europe, face the same hurdles, and what
we could do to get LWW to handle our requests for online access on
HighWire?

Thank you for your time.
Kind regards,
Peter van Laarhoven.
=====================

Dear staff member of the American Heart Association,

I am writing to you on behalf of the libraries of the University of
Groningen (Netherlands). We hope you can help us clarify the future of
online access to your journals through HighWire. It is because we feel
trapped in a circle if we ask for information about this through your
representatives in The Netherlands, that I approach you directly.

We have great trouble in obtaining Access through HighWire, and are very
unhappy about this. Your journals are indispensible for us. The access
problem seems to apply to many, possibly all, European libraries.

Your journals are published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), and
hosted on the platforms of both HighWire and Journals@OVID. We strongly
prefer the HighWire platform, as it is functionally superior to the other
and we already have many journals through HighWire.

If we try to get online access to your journals, we are routed by LWW to
OVID, and are told that the only way they can offer us access is through
Journals@OVID. The reason behind this is, probably, that both LWW and OVID
are subsidiaries of Wolters Kluwer, the Dutch publising conglomerate.
Sometime earlier this year the mother company appears to have decided that
online access to LWW journals should be exclusively offered on the
Journals@OVID platform.

We feel this policy of Wolters Kluwer and LWW is detrimental to our
interests, since we are forced to use an inferior platform. A superior
platform is available, and has been so for years.

Therefore my question to you is: is there some way we can obtain access to
your journals through HighWire, and if so, how should we do it? If not,
and your association somehow complies with Kluwer's and LWW's policy,
could you please give us some indication of why it chose to do so?

I hope you can answer these questions.
Thank you and kind regards,
Peter van Laarhoven.

------- End of forwarded message -------
============================================================
Peter van Laarhoven
Elektronische Bibliotheek       Online Information Librarian
Universiteitsbibliotheek                  University Library
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen          University of Groningen
Postbus 559                                      P.O.Box 559
9700 AN GRONINGEN                          9700 AN GRONINGEN
E-Mail   : laarhove@ub.rug.nl                The Netherlands
tel.     : (+31) 50-3637763              
fax      : (+31) 50-3634996
homepage : http://www.ub.rug.nl
============================================================