Gracing seems to continue to be a problem with some publishers journals. The
ASA has drawn the attention of publishers representative bodies to this
problem and continues to stress the importance of gracing electronic
journals to publishers at every opportunity. This has certainly helped to
reduce the scale of the challenge if not to eliminate it. For a number of
(good) reasons many publishers do not wish to publicise their gracing policy
and hence the rather dated look to the list. However increasing numbers of
publishers avoid this problem and many other electronic journal
authentication, management and access issues by enabling the agent to allow
authentication and access at the time the renewal is processed by the agent.
This has helped considerably and we hope more publishers will empower agents
in this way.
Rollo Turner
Secretary General
Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries
10 Lime Avenue
High Wycombe
Bucks HP11 1DP
www.subscription-agents.org
Tel +(0)1494 534778
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Lesley Crawshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 1:29 PM
Subject: Gracing of Electronic Journal Subscriptions - How Many Publishers
Are Adhering to the ASA's Code of Practice?
Hi,
Already this year, several emails have arrived informing us that our
electronic access to "subscribed" journals has been terminated. These are
all Highwire titles, but at least we get informed that our access has been
terminated for Highwire titles, whereas with many other publishers we may
not even get informed about our loss of access, and will only find out by
our users informing us. At present we have little idea of how many of our
subscriptions are affected by such cutoffs in access.
The first batch of subscription status alerts we received from Highwire were
for titles that expired on the 31st December 2003 - they affected the
following titles:
American Journal of Sports Medicine
Mycologia
Radiology
I find it incredible that any publisher would terminate its access to its
titles on the 31st December. Who's around to get anything sorted at that
time?
I should point out that on checking today, I find that access for two of
these titles has now been extended, one by a month, and one by 3 months,
which is obviously good news. However, I hadn't received any communication
regarding these two extensions. Unfortunately one of our subscriptions,
Radiology, remains expired.
The ASA has a code of practice for the gracing of electronic subscriptions
which calls "on all publishers to grace their electronic journals for the
first two months of the year in an effort to prevent so many customers being
denied access to their journals on January 1st each year even when their
subscriptions have been renewed and pre-paid in good time", which can be
found at: http://www.subscription-agents.org/egrace.html, but their list of
publishers which grace electronic subscriptions is woefully short, and
doesn't appear to have been updated since June 2002!! Only 14 publishers
are listed.
The main problem remains - how do we know what grace period each publisher
offers at the beginning of each subscription year for our electronic
subscriptions? Do we have to contact each publisher and ask them? I would
recommend that all publishers offer a standard two month gracing period as
recommended by the ASA, rather than each publisher doing it's own thing! At
least then there would be some clarity and we, librarians, publishers,
agents and intermediaries would have a standard to which we could all work
to. The present situation with all publishers having different cut off dates
for electronic access is a recipe for disaster.
I realise that some publishers have concerns about gracing, in that it could
be seen to encourage poor practice in the whole subscription renewals
process.
However, the subscriptions renewals process is no longer the simple thing it
used to be i.e. renew or cancel. The range of different pricing/licensing
policies that publishers are adopting is growing, and many journals are
moving to publishers with differing pricing policies compared to the former
publisher. This in itself must make the whole subscription renewals process
more and more of a headache with many institutions having to further amend
their instructions to agents, when pricing policies are found to have
changed after the renewal instructions have gone to the agent.
I should point out that my own institution still hasn't received the
invoices for the majority of our 2004 subscriptions from our major agent,
Ebsco, but this is partly the result of our department and our institution
undergoing a major reorganisation in the summer of 2003, which has required
major changes to our account by Ebsco for 2004. We are also still picking up
the pieces from the whole Divine situation.
Some publishers I've contacted in the past week are still processing
renewals/payments for the 2004 subscription period, which makes checking
whether subscriptions have been renewed/paid even more difficult.
In other words there are lots of valid reasons why there may be delays in
payment to publishers from agents, delays in publishers processing payments,
and delays in subscribers informing agents of their requirements for 2004.
The adoption of a standard gracing period by all publishers, whether large
or small, would do a lot to alleviate the problems we face each year with
loss of access to some of our subscriptions.
We also need to remember that at the end of the day it is our readers that
are inconvenienced by this loss of access, and that they may lose patience
with publishers that terminate our access so readily.
That's all for now folks.
Cheers
Lesley
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant,
Learning and Information Services,
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB UK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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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