Hi,
On the 03/01/03 we were informed by a student that we had lost access to
the electronic version of the American Orthopedic Society for Sports
Medicine's journal, American Journal of Sports Medicine, on the
31/12/02. I contacted the publisher, or rather the fulfillment agent
(ebsco.com) who handled their subscriptions and was told that because
they hadn't received payment from our agent, Divine, that our online
access had been terminated, but that they were going to grace us the
paper issues of this journal.
I did speak to a customer services representative at the fulfillment
agent who didn't understand my concern at losing online access. I then
emailed a customer service representative (who I had dealt with
previously when asking about subscription options for 2003) explaining
that we were a Divine (Europe) customer and that although we had
instructed our agent, Divine (Europe), to renew our subscription we
hadn't yet been invoiced by them etc. etc.. I also asked why the grace
period hadn't been extended to the electronic version, which our users
preferred to access. I didn't receive a reply to this email
Out of desperation I contacted John Sack at Highwire, who publish the
online version, asking if Highwire could help me get our access
restored. They contacted the publisher directly, bypassing the
publisher's fulfillment agent and as a result our online access was
restored and was graced through to the 31/03/03. All this was done on
the day I asked for help!! Thanks a lot Highwire!
Then on the 10/04/03 a student emailed me saying that he couldn't access
the online version of the American Journal of Sports Medicine, which he
urgently needed for his coursework, as the subscription had expired on
the 31/03/03.
What was strange about this particular example was that I just received
a letter from the Managing Editor of the American Journal of Sports
Medicine which recognised the situation that Divine/RoweCom/Faxon
subscribers had found themselves in and saying that they had directed
their subscription office (fulfillment agent) to grace the electronic
subscription through the end of April.
I then contacted a customer services representative at the fulfillment
agent asking why the information in the letter I had received from the
publisher hadn't been implemented by them. The customer services
representative I spoke to said they weren't aware of this and could I
fax this letter to her so that she could take it to her line manager!
I am now waiting for our access to be reinstated.
What this illustrates is a breakdown in communication between this
publisher and their fulfillment agent. I have heard that this is not
unusual. What it also illustrates is the need for some warning to be
given to ejournal administrators that a problem is about to happen. It
really is not good enough to have to rely on our users to tell us when
the access has gone down, as this makes it look like we are not doing
our job properly. If ejournal services can provide alerts for the end
user why can't the people in libraries etc. who manage these
subscription be provided with alerts. It's not much to ask, or is it?
I have to say this isn't the only case I've had in the last 2 days where
Divine subscriptions have gone down without warning. However, in the
other cases where I was able to speak directly to the publisher and
explain the situation, the response I received was swift and positive.
Anybody else out there had similar frustrating experiences?
Have a good weekend!
Cheers
Lesley
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Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant,
Learning and Information Services,
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB UK
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e-mail: [log in to unmask]
phone: 01707 284662 fax: 01707 284666
web: http://www.herts.ac.uk/lis/subjects/natsci/ejournal/
list owner: [log in to unmask]
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