Wiley licensing changes

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

Wiley InterScience Update

New York, NY June 24, 1999 - Eric A. Swanson, Senior Vice President,
Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
today reported on the success of Wiley InterScience
(http://www.interscience.wiley.com) in the six months since its commercial
launch.

"We are very gratified by the favorable market response to Wiley
InterScience since it launched January 7, 1999: Customer uptake has been
encouraging; more than 2,400 institutional customers have activated Basic
Access Licenses, an option which provides for access at a single site and
is included in the 1999 subscription fee," reported Mr. Swanson. "Our
customer base is increasing rapidly."

Mr. Swanson said that Wiley is also engaged in active negotiations with
corporate, academic, and government customers interested in Enhanced
Access Licenses, which provide multi-year, multiple-site access and a host
of other features for Wiley InterScience. The University of Toronto (the
largest university in Canada, serving over 55,000 students with 41
libraries and three campuses) was the first customer to choose this
license option. He said that the company also signed an agreement with
OhioLINK (which serves 500,000 students, faculty, and staff at 74 academic
institutions across the state) for all Wiley InterScience journals to be
locally hosted in the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center.

The success of Wiley InterScience depends on acceptance by readers and
institutional customers. Accordingly, he announced a decision, based on
market feedback, to change a policy: Beginning in August, 1999, the User
ID/Password requirement for institutional authorized user access will be
eliminated and seamless IP address-based access will become the standard.
Users will still have the option to choose to register for a personal home
page, which offers a number of customizable search and storage options.
This will remove a potential barrier for users who are concerned about
their anonymity or who find the requirement inconvenient. Customers will
receive a detailed announcement explaining the change in the near future.

"Our objective is to make the information published in our journals as
accessible to our customers as possible," explained Mr. Swanson. To this
end, he also announced Wiley's participation in an experiment being
conducted by Herbert Van de Sompel of the University of Ghent with the Los
Alamos National Laboratory Research Library called SFX linking. The
project, which has been developed as a proof of concept, establishes links
between a number of leading online resources (including Wiley
InterScience) that LANL subscribes to but which reside on different
servers. Mr. Van de Sompel and LANL will present it at a Library
Information Technology Association (LITA) session at the American Library
Association Annual meeting later this week, and Wiley will participate in
that demonstration.

Wiley also plans to include access to additional content, such as online
encyclopedias, other reference works, and the well known laboratory manual
Current Protocols series, to Wiley InterScience in the next year.

Wiley InterScience was launched in the fall of 1997 to respond to the
growing worldwide demand for important, reliable, and timely scientific,
technical, medical, and professional information. Since January 7, 1999,
more than 300 journals in full text dating back to January 1997 and the
full range of services available from Wiley InterScience are accessible to
subscribers and their authorized users. The company developed its access
options with customer needs in mind: In addition to the two institutional
license options mentioned above, Wiley InterScience can now offer access
for society members to their society journals, and complimentary access
for our journal editorial board members. Guest users - anyone not
associated with a customer - continue to have access to all tables of
contents and abstracts for all titles in Wiley InterScience for one year
after publication.

Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is a global publisher of print
and electronic products specializing in scientific, technical, and medical
books and journals;  professional and consumer books and subscription
services;  and textbooks and educational materials for undergraduate and
graduate students as well as lifelong learners. Wiley has publishing,
marketing and distribution centers in the United States, Canada, Europe,
Asia, and Australia. The company's Class A and Class B shares are listed
on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols JWa and JWb,
respectively. Wiley's Internet site can be accessed at
http://www.wiley.com.