If electronic is to replace paper

[David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu>]

If electronic is to replace paper we need acceptable pricing and standards.

To quote David Sommers, I think the basic financial pricing model most
librarians would like to see are:

> 1.    separate pricing by individual title and format.  

> 2.    sufficient differential between electronic and print 
> pricing to offer clear incentives to transfer format, even allowing for
> VAT factor (where applicable).

> 3.    if we absolutely must have packages of titles, they 
> should be bundled by subject - not publisher - and should permit
> cancellations of hard-copy.

(I applaud the idea of packages by discipline, which I have not yet seen
offered!)

Besides appropriate pricing that encourages the switch, if electronic is to
replace paper, the necessary conditions  (besides the basic standard terms)
are: 

A. Redundant adequate servers, with guaranteed up-time (99.5% ? -- that's
1 hr a week) and response time (Clicking on journal name to displaying
article titles in the current issue: 10 sec., article to pdf page view: 10
sec?. Obviously, local conditions must be optimal for this, but I was just
able to reproducibly achieve both times for at least two different
publishers.)

B. Guaranteed access to the years purchased if the subscription is
subsequently canceled.

C. Permanent archiving, forever, by the publisher or acceptable third
party, with backup provisions to deal with the inability of the archiving
organization to continue.  In particular, if permanent archiving is
guaranteed by the publisher, there must be a designated acceptable
organization to which the rights will be transferred if the publisher
cannot continue.

D. Ability to use for interlibrary loan, paper, fax, or electronic,
subject to the current provisions of copyright law for paper copies,
including the COG limitations and CCC payments.  It is appropriate to
require that a permanent copy not be stored, paper or electronic. (It
would also be acceptable to require electronic transmittal to be made via
a non-digital intermediate medium, e.g. printing a copy and scanning it. )

E. Access to any authorized library user in the libraries, without
password or required identification.

F. Access to the entire organization's own user community anywhere on
campus without personal identification or password, and by proxy server or
password from anywhere in the world

AND, most importantly:

G. The electronic version must contain at least the full complete cover to
cover equivalent of the printed journal in page image format via pdf or
equivalent. Note that links, searching, and enriched content when
appropriate are now standard features; all e-journals are expected to have
them.

A few publishers do already offer most or all of the above.  I do not
think any library which intends a permanent collection can possible
replace print without all of them. To the extent that ejournals are
supplementary to print, naturally many of these conditions can be less
rigid. But without every one of them, e-journals are in important ways
less good than paper.

-- 
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