Cox Associates Release of Model Licenses

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

John Cox, of John Cox Associates (John.E.Cox@btinternet.com)
sends the following important announcement:
___________________________________________________________________________

Licensingmodels.com: model standard licenses for academic, public and
corporate libraries

John Cox, John Cox Associates, John.E.Cox@btinternet.com

A suite of generic standard licenses for electronic journals is now
available on a new web site: www.licensingmodels.com

What makes these model licenses different is that they have been sponsored
by and developed in close cooperation with five major subscription agents:
Blackwell, Dawson, EBSCO, Harrassowitz and Swets. Each of these companies
has traditionally sought to rationalize and ease the process of ordering
journals. They provide bibliographic and management services to libraries,
and an effective distribution channel for 20,000 publishers world-wide who
publish for the library market. The negotiation and management of licenses
for electronic information is a natural expansion of this long-established
activity.

There are four model licenses, for single academic institutions, for
academic consortia, for public libraries, and for corporate, government
and other research libraries. They are international in application and
are the result of consultation in which librarians, publishers and
subscription agents have been actively involved. Their development has
been undertaken by John Cox Associates, an international publishing
consultancy specializing in licensing and content management.

The process of developing licenses is evolutionary. The starting point was
the UK's PA/JISC model license, the first to be developed jointly by
publishers and librarians, from the Publishers Association and the Joint
Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils. It
was a vital source of format, concepts and model provisions. The US
Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources from the American Library
Association et al, and the Statements of Current Perspectives from the
International Coalition of Library Consortia were both important sources
of ideas, as were the LIBLICENSE web site and many publishers' individual
licenses already in the public arena.

These licenses are in the public domain. They are intended to help
publishers, subscription agents and libraries to create agreements that
express what they have negotiated. They do not prescribe the outcome of
those negotiations, but are designed to account for the varying needs of
different types of customer, and the requirements and policies of
different publishers. They contain a range of variables, so that the
clause appropriate to each situation can be selected in compiling the
license. They are clearly written, flexible and succinct.

John Cox John Cox Associates 
The Pippins,
6 Lees Close, 
Whittlebury
TOWCESTER
Northants NN12 8XF 
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1327 857908