Hi,

Does anyone out there know if there is a license for Academic Emergency
Medicine? If there is can I have a copy?

Before we place an order for a journal/deal that is e-only or which has an
electronic component we have to investigate if a license is available for
that journal or for that publisher's journals. Sounds easy doesn't it?

From our perspective the license should clarify our rights as subscribers.
If there is a license we have to get our copyright and licensing officer to
formally accept the license and get the relevant number of copies bound and
signed and posted off to the publisher.  We can then proceed and place the
order with our agent. 

If there isn't a license we have to try and get email confirmation from the
publisher that a license isn't required or we have to try and clarify with
the publisher what our rights to the electronic content are e.g. what
content is available through a current subscription, will we retain archival
rights if we cancel a subscription, does the publisher allow walk-in users,
are ILLs permitted, is remote access permitted etc. etc. 

All of this is extremely time-consuming, but is required by our institution
for compliance with our University's procedures. I spend a lot of time these
days trawling publishers' site trying to find out if a license exists. If I
can't find this information I then spend a lot of time emailing publishers
to find out this information. I get some quite amusing/bemusing answers -
one said "what's a license!"  

We want to order a print/online subscription to Academic Emergency Medicine,
which is published by Elsevier, but which is not available through
ScienceDirect. This is unfortunate as if this journal was available through
ScienceDirect all we would need to do is to get it added to our current
ScienceDirect license. However, it is one of the many Elsevier titles which
still aren't on ScienceDirect. Why not?? Being an Elsevier title, one would
have expected that there would be a formal license for all of their journals
or am I being naïve?

Back in March I emailed [log in to unmask] as this was the email address
given on the Highwire site for queries about institutional subscribers I
found at: http://www.aemj.org/subscriptions/

I explained that I wanted to place an order an institutional print/online
subscription to this journal through our agent and asked for clarification
about whether there was a license for accessing their journal online. I
explained that without this information I couldn't progress the order. I
also asked whether this journal was going to be available on ScienceDirect.
I did get a reply to my email, but it didn't answer my questions. I emailed
again asking whether unlimited access to this journal via IP through
Highwire required a license. I received a reply advising me to go to the
Highwire Press site where information on setting up access was located.
Basically we interpreted this as meaning that there wasn't a formal license,
but only terms and conditions. 

The requisition pack I have to prepare each time I place an order for a
subscription is still sitting on my desk for this journal. I have now been
advised to ask them if they will allow use under the terms of the NESLi2
Model License. 

All this work, just to progress an order for one journal!


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]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~