Good morning, all!

At MMU, all licence agreements must be approved and signed by the University Secretary, Steve
Heaton.  When Steve read the JSTOR Sub-Licence Agreement, he had a few concerns.  He signed the agreement
but asked me to contact the JISC about these concerns and to suggest amendments to the agreement.  A no go for
the time being.  And he also suggested that I find out if other institutions felt the same concern.

The problems with the licence are as follows -- and these are Steve's words:

"1/ I could not see anything which identified what would happen if the new JSTOR Language and Literature
Collection failed to launch in the Autumn.  I would expect a pro rata refund to be credited.  (Say for example
the launch is delayed until next Spring - we might want a significant credit note.)  [As we all know, the launch went
ahead as planned, but I think Steve makes a valid point. MH]

2/ There is a conflict between Clause 14 of the main agreement (page 10) which states that the agreement
is governed by English Law and Clause 13 of Schedule 2 (page 14) which says that it is to be governed by
US Law.  From our point of view English Law is much better as the governing law.

3/ I am troubled generally by the interaction of the main agreement and Schedule 2.  There are a number of areas
of potential difficulty (see for example Clause 11.7 on page 9 and Clause 8 on page 14 -- although one relates to
HEFCE and the other to JSTOR disentangling them could be extremely difficult.)  Clause 16.4 (page 11) and
Clause 15 (page 15) are meant to do exactly the same thing so we don't really need both of them.

My impression is that Schedule 2 has been 'bolted on' as an afterthought but it would better if key elements
from it were incorporated in to the main agreement.

Sorry if this seems to be taking an unnecessary difficult approach but since the agreement is somewhat flawed
I have to point it out."

Is this matter worth the Committee taking up with JISC itself?