JISC Press Release: Access to over 2,500 electronic journals viaNESLi2

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:09:21 -0000
From: Sean Dunne <sean.dunne@MAN.AC.UK>
To: JISC-E-COLLECTIONS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Press Release: Access to over 2,500 electronic journals via NESLi2

Press Release: Access to over 2,500 electronic journals via NESLi2

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=nesli2_pr_191103
__________
JISC - The Joint Information Systems Committee

Press Release: Access to over 2,500 electronic journals via NESLi2 
19 Nov 2003  

JISC, The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee, today announced that
it has secured agreements with seven major international publishers via
NESLi2, the national electronic journals initiative for Higher and Further
Education, since the launch of the new programme in June this year.

In the last two months, all universities and further education colleges in
the United Kingdom have received details of agreements struck with ACM
(Association for Computing Machinery), ALPSP (Association of Learned and
Professional Society Publishers), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Cambridge
University Press, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Oxford University Press and
Springer Verlag. The agreements mean that more than 2,500 e-journals will
now be accessible in 2004 to all authorised users at each UK institution
subscribing to the individual offers.

Discussions, and finalisation of agreements, are continuing with other
publishers and it is anticipated that further announcements will be made
in the coming weeks. These include Elsevier, Nature, Science and John
Wiley & Sons. This will result in a further significant increase in the
number of accessible e-journals for 2004.

Lorraine Estelle, Collections Manager for JISC said: "We are delighted 
that agreements are now in place with these leading scholarly publishers, 
enabling UK universities and colleges to have access to key electronic 
journal content. We look forward to working with these publishers and with 
others who we anticipate will come on board in the near future."

Albert Prior, Director of Content Complete, JISC's NESLi2 Negotiation 
Agent, added: "UK academic institutions can benefit from the favourable 
terms now agreed with these major publishers. We have been very pleased 
with the receptive response by the publishers to the needs and aims of 
NESLi2 and our member institutions."

Commenting on the agreement Sally Morris, Chief Executive of ALPSP said 
"We are delighted that Swets Blackwell have sold the very first license 
for the ALPSP Learned Journals Collection to NESLi2; librarians in the UK 
and elsewhere were extremely supportive in helping us develop a project to 
bring together journals from not-for-profit and other small publishers, 
and we very much appreciate their practical support in subscribing to the 
collection so soon after it has been launched."

"This year we have had 73 UK higher education institutions accessing the
important research in Blackwell's journals", said Paul Calow, Blackwell
Publishing's Senior Journal Sales Executive for the UK.  He added, "With
this new flexible agreement for 2004 we're looking forward to working with
NESLi2 to ensure even more academics and students can access the content
next year".

Ken Rhodes, Academic Sales Director, UK Cambridge University Press, 
commented on the agreement: "Wider access to scholarly material is the 
cornerstone of our online journals strategy. It is also fundamental to our 
role as a university press. The NESLI2 deal is a great step forward in 
offering more content to more libraries and more researchers."

"We are pleased to have finalized the agreement for NESLi2 with Content
Complete," said Ad Stam, Sales Manager at Kluwer Academic Publishers. "We
think this agreement is transparent and offers members sufficient
flexibility in subscribing to Kluwer Online. We are confident that many HE
and FE institutions will now have access to the complete contents of more
than 670 Kluwer journals in 2004."

"Being part of the NESLi2 initiative is a vital way to give UK 
institutions the value for money, choice and flexibility they should 
expect from a university press such as OUP," commented Martin Richardson, 
Director of OUP Journals Division. "Therefore we are delighted to include 
our broad journals collection in the 2004 agreement."

Arnoud de Kemp, Deputy Member of the Board of Springer Verlag was 
enthusiastic about the development.  "We are delighted to have reached an 
agreement with NESLi2 ensuring UK Higher and Further Education 
institutions unlimited access to the journal collection on SpringerLink. 
Springer started its service way back in 1996 as one of the pioneers in 
electronic information supply and now offers well over 300000 documents to 
scientists, teachers and students all over the world."

Notes for editors:

NESLi2 was launched in June 2003 and covers subscription agreements for 
the years 2004 to 2006. It is the successor scheme to the original NESLI 
which ran from 1997-2002. NESLi2 has focussed its discussions on ten 
scholarly publishers for 2004, following an extensive Serials Requirements 
Survey undertaken in 2002. An eleventh consortium of publishers was added 
when it became clear that the ALPSP Learned Journals Collection would be 
available for libraries to order for 2004. The negotiations were handled 
by Content Complete Ltd on behalf of JISC. Five of the seven publishers 
are using the model NESLi2 Licence for Journals.

The JISC is a joint committee of the UK further and higher education 
funding bodies, and is responsible for supporting the innovative use of 
information and communication technology (ICT) to support learning, 
teaching, and research.  It is best known for providing the SuperJANET 
network, a range of advice and support services, and a portfolio of 
high-quality resources.  Information about the JISC, its services and 
programmes can be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/   Contact Philip Pothen 
on +44 (0)20 7848 2935, email p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk 

Content Complete Ltd (CCL) is a new company established by Albert Prior 
and Paul Harwood, both of whom have extensive journals related experience, 
to provide outsourced negotiations and related support services to 
academic and research libraries and institutions in the area of digital 
content. CCL�s partner in NESLi2 is MIMAS, the JISC/ESRC supported 
national data centre, which provides the helpdesk and communications 
functions of NESLi2. For further information on Content Complete Ltd and 
MIMAS visit www.contentcomplete.com and www.mimas.ac.uk

_________________

best wishes
Sean Dunne
For the NESLi2 Negotiation Agent
nesli2@mimas.ac.uk