Dear List members, 

I found the comments by Geoff Kerrison very helpful. On the basis of his 
recommendations, I have drafted the following text that we plan to send 
during the next weeks and months to publishers that already have surfaced 
as "repeat offenders" (in saying this I recognize that sometimes its also the 
fault of the subscription agency or even - horribile dictu - the library, if things 
go wrong, so lets perhaps rephrase it as "recurrent causes for trouble") or 
turn out as such this season. We don't want to request it from everybody 
because we see no reason to penalize publishers who know their business 
and have not caused us trouble. 

On the other hand, it would be useful if we could put together a list of 
publisher independent e-journals platforms that already offer some form 
of alert or advance notice before an impending cut off, or alternatively, 
offer a possibility to display one's own subscriptions (preferably in a single
view, not with dozens of subaccounts) complete with status information 
so that one may recognize impending cutoffs in advance. We may find 
some of the solutions implemented until now good or excellent, others 
very poorly implemented, and should comment on this also. Of course we 
do not need to ask a publisher to implement any special solution if our 
preferred platform already offers one, but we may have to ask im to support 
this (not every publisher on a multi publisher platform follows the same 
policies).

With respect to the duration of the grace periods, I trust the experience
of ASA that 2 months is reasonable. My impression is that longer grace
periods usually don't really help but only delay the inevitable moment of 
truth, when access gets cut off anyway (this will usually occur for those 
repeat offenders that are simply not able to process payments correctly 
and assign it to the right accounts but always rely on their customers 
to fix it by claiming, or for those incidents where something got wrong 
due to whatever special circumstances, for example a subscription 
change or a conversion from direct order to a consolidation service - 
areas of vulnerability where libraries and agencies have special 
responsibility to make it transparent for the publisher what they intend 
to do). At this point the additional safety net of an advance notice of 
cutoff will become useful and even essential. 

Best regards,
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library

Here the text that we plan to send out to selected publishers who have 
repeatedly shown up as 'trouble makers':

To whom it may concern:

Our experience has shown that grace periods alone are not effective 
in ensuring uninterrupted access to electronic journals or online 
editions of print journals that we subscribe to on behalf of our scientists. 
In order to provide a dependable and reliable service to our patrons, 
effective with our renewal for the subscription year 2007, xxx University 
Library requires an amendment to our current license agreement.

1. In recognition of ASA recommendations, as laid down under
http://www.subscription-agents.org/news/egrace.html
the publisher will grace its electronic journals for the first two months 
of the year

2. The library or its agency will inform the publisher (alternatively: a
specified department that is responsible for the provision of online journal
access) before the end of the subscription term if it does NOT intend to renew a
current subscription to an electronic journal of the publisher. In this case,
the grace period may be stalled by the publisher.

3. In addition to establishing or continuing to provide a grace period for
electronic journal subscriptions, the publisher will make sure that the access
control system automatically notifies the subscriber <n> (insert number, at
least 3) weeks before an intended cut off, if the conditions that would trigger
such an event, are met (e.g., if renewal has not been registered, or payment for
the order has not been processed).

Note 1: If such a system triggered advance notice of impending cutoff is
implemented, the regular grace period may be shortened as long as the total
contractual grace period (normal grace period plus advance notice time) does not
get shorter than 2 months.

Note 2: Grace period and advance notice period should be balanced in a way that
avoids spurious false alarms due to insufficient time for processing year-end
renewal orders.

Note 3: We recognize that it will take the publisher some time to implement
corresponding policies and technical procedures. Therefore, we do not expect a
to receive a finalized amendment by now, but ask you to start the process and
confirm that you make preparations for this. However, we need the amendment at
latest by end of August or, if that is not possible, at least a firm commitment
to have it in place at a specified date before the end of the current
subscription period.