Re: Article based subscription

[David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu>]

With paper journals there was a real difference between in the usefulness
of what you got with a subscription and what you got with any of the
document delivery options: articles from the subscribed title were right
there in the library for immediate access, and the others took several
days or more. (This is of course in addition to the difference is
browsability.)  With electronic journals this difference disappears--it
becomes merely a question of how you want to pay for the content. The way
I think best is a simple cross-over, e.g. a journal whose electronic
subscription price is $1000 would offer articles at $20, but with the
payment to be no more than $1000 total. I think this would accommodate all
sizes and classes of institutions equitably.

The difficulty for a publisher, I would think, would be not getting the
money in advance. But then, I think the universal contract provision in
paper subscriptions for non-cancellable payment in advance and being able
to start only on Jan. 1 to be unreasonable even for paper, and totally
without justification for electronic titles. (Maybe it would be fair for
an institution to make an estimated deposit against use.)

David Goodman
Biology Librarian, and
Co-Chair, Electronic Journals Task Force
Princeton University Library
dgoodman@princeton.edu         http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/
phone: 609-258-3235            fax: 609-258-2627

________________________

> Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President at Elsevier Science, sends the
> following message in response to Joanna Tousley-Escalante's inquiry about
> the PEAK project and how it has impacted Elsevier's licensing options.
> 
> ------
> To liblicense-l:
> 
> Joanna Tousley-Escalante asked whether Elsevier was now, as a result
> of the PEAK experiment, negotiating licenses on the basis of a set
> number of articles.  Good question and the answer is slightly more com-
> plicated than a simple yes or no.
> 
> First, the PEAK experiment just ended August 31.  So we do not know
> the results yet.  We had some mid-course results to look at earlier this
> year, but we all still have to analyze the data from the full experiment.  I
> hope that will be done between now and the end of the year.
> 
> Having said that, there were clear benefits that many PEAK participants
> saw in the article access option.  Therefore, for the PEAK participants we
> have worked to give them options in making a transition to our ScienceDirect
> program that will preserve their access to the whole database.  It is not
> at this stage the same model as was tested in PEAK, but it achieves most
> of the same results.  We are doing some other things with non-PEAK
> customers to also increase their access to the entire database.
> 
> There are a number of ideas we want to consider from PEAK, including
> the notion that once an article has been "bought", it is permanently available
> to the whole authorized community at that school.  This is an intriguing
> notion, described to me as building a collection one article at a time.
> 
> As I recently said to PEAK libraries, for Elsevier PEAK is in some ways
> just beginning.  We intend to very seriously evaluate the results and
> I expect you will hear more in the future.
> 
> Karen Hunter
> Senior Vice President
> Elsevier Science
> k.hunter@elsevier.com