Hi Louise,
You have my sympathy!
We don't have a subscription to Medicine, but we did have a similar problem
to the one you describe with another publication of theirs, Surgery, both in
2005 and 2006.
On the 9th February 2006 we got an email from Extenza informing us that our
subscription to Surgery had been uploaded on to Extenza and asking us to
activate our account. At this point it was pretty clear to me that our
subscription had got uploaded onto Extenza as an individual subscription
rather than an institutional subscription. We'd had the same problem in 2005
when we found out that our subscription had got uploaded as an individual
subscription rather than as an institutional subscription. The publisher
said that they didn't have our IP address information, even though I had
emailed them our IP address information when trying to get our access set up
for the first time!
We now have access to Surgery as an institution for this subscription year,
however it has taken a fair amount of time and effort by myself and Extenza
to get the problems resolved. It will be interesting to see if we have the
same problem next year, but to be honest I thought after the problems we had
in 2005, we wouldn't have any problems this year.
Still, it hasn't reflected well on this particular publisher. Their web site
at: http://www.medicinepublishing.co.uk/index.php/subscriptions isn't
particularly helpful for institutions either.
Cheers
Lesley
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant
Learning and Information Services
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 01707 284662 fax: 01707 284666
list owner: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Louise Cole
Sent: 23 March 2006 14:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Medicine Publishing Company - another tale of woe
Dear all
Another title causing us a headache: Medicine, a publication of the
Medicine Publishing Company.
Once upon a time this title was available from MPG's own website, with
username and password access - but, eventually, the title moved to
Extenza.
Hooray, we thought. No more username and password; we were given IP
access to the title, and everything was fine ... until this year.
Since January we have been trying to establish access to this title, a
key journal for us and our medical students.
We have been told:
- that our subscription had not been renewed
- that the site, Extenza, had 'technical issues'
- that our customer number was wrong
Finally, we were sent an activation code and it failed. We were not
allowed to associate an IP range with the account.
On enquiring 'why?' we were told that the subscription was for single
user access (since when?) and that we could only access through a
username and password (strange, as last year we were on IP without any
problems).
We were then told that IP access for institutions was only available
through Science Direct (and yes, you guessed - the journal is not ON
Science Direct).
Extenza, MPG, and our subscription agent all appear to have now washed
their hands of the matter, although I can prove that:
A. we have had access to Medicine via IP range on Extenza in the past
B. the other MPG journal we have, Surgery, is available on IP access
with no problems (although that took a while to activate).
Is this just happening to us?
Has anyone else out there been able to solve this ridiculous 'you can't
have access via IP even though it is technically available on our site';
or would anyone from Medicine Publishing Group care to comment on why:
A. their policy appears to have changed for 2006
B. no one in the chain now seems to know what the policy actually IS
Louise
Louise Cole
Electronic Resources Team Leader
Health Sciences Library
Level 7 Worsley Building
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
tel: 0113 34 35502
fax: 0113 34 34381
email: [log in to unmask]
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