Hi Louise,

The whole area of perpetual access when journals/publishers are taken over by other publishers is a real minefield and doesn't just apply to T&F. Hopefully TRANSFER will help with these issues in the future. The problem is what about all the transfers/takeovers that happened in the pre-TRANSFER days.

I've recently spent a fair amount of time and effort (digging through old files/email messages) trying to clarify perpetual access rights to a number of our T&F subscriptions, concentrating on those titles where T&F had taken over the publisher in more recent times. These included Frank Cass, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Swets & Zeitlinger, and Triangle Journals Ltd.

The requirement to have clarification about perpetual access to these and other T&F titles only became apparent when most of our T&F current subscriptions lapsed due to delays in us renewing our subscriptions for 2009 and we were left with a far less perpetual access rights that I believed we were entitled to. Maybe rather naively I had assumed that these prior rights would have automatically been applied to our account.

In the case of Triangle Journals Ltd we suddenly found that our perpetual access to these titles had only been applied to the 2006-2008 content which is basically from the time that T&F took over these titles, whereas I believed that our perpetual access rights should have covered 1997-2008 (with one exception - Journal of In-service Education - where we had access back to 1994) which incorporates the prior rights from the former publisher.

I don't believe there was ever any clarification on perpetual access rights to existing subscribers for content that was published before T&F took over these journals. Like you I had some correspondence relating to honouring rights to current subscribers from T&F, but nothing about perpetual access rights i.e. rights on cancellation (lapsing).

I am pleased to say that T&F after a fair amount of correspondence did agree to honour all former rights to our Triangle Journal Ltd subscriptions and we now have perpetual access rights from 1997-2008 (plus from 1994 for the Journal of In-service Education) for them.

I had assumed that following this "clarification" that these rights would be extended to all former subscribers of Triangle Journals Ltd so that we didn't have to individually put in the large amount of effort required to sort out the issue for our own institutions.

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers
Lesley


Lesley Crawshaw
Knowledge &  Business Intelligence Consultant
Learning and Information Services
University of Hertfordshire
Tel: 01707 284662

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-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by UKSG - Connecting the Information Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cole, Louise
Sent: 24 July 2009 10:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [LIS-E-RESOURCES] The strange case of Triangle Journals Ltd. (and implications for free archives)

Hello all

A case study for those of us grappling with the issue of 'assured archive' access in any form.

Back in 2005 the publisher Triangle Journals Ltd were taken over by Taylor and Francis.  Triangle published several titles on educational research, and were extremely popular due to their policy of making most journal issues available 12 months after initial publication.

In fact so popular that many knowledge bases (SerialsSolutions) still list these titles as having free content - but they don't.

Taylor and Francis last made a statement regarding the status of Triangle backfiles on the 15th June 2005, on lis-e-journals as was:

"We have no plans to change the backfile access policy for the Triangle journals but we will monitor the situation and review it at the end of 2006."

Now sometime between then and now the policy must have been reviewed because the content previously owned and made freely available by Triangle - for example Teacher Development, from 1997-2004 - is now asking for payment.  But I don't remember seeing an announcement and can't find anything on a quick internet search.

Can anyone from T&F confirm what the policy actually is now?

The Triangle licence (http://web.archive.org/web/20020224075402/www.triangle.co.uk/sitelicence.html) incidentally did not mention the free after 1 year policy but stated "On termination of this License, the Publisher shall provide continuing access for Authorised Users to that part of the Licensed Materials which was published and paid for within the Subscription Period, either from the Server or by supplying electronic files to the Licensee."

Their price list (http://web.archive.org/web/20040205141239/www.triangle.co.uk/prices.htm) however did state "Current-year online access is available free only to those paying the Library rate for the conventionally printed editions. Thus current-year online access is not available to Individual subscribers; they should seek online access via a Library subscriber."

This case does have wider implications - many publishers do offer freely available titles but what happens if they are sold on?  Free titles (or backfiles) don't always have licence agreements (those on Highwire Press are a good example) and generally even if they have the wording relates to 'best efforts' or 'content purchased'.

I know the TRANSFER code can go some way to dealing with this; but would it have helped in this case?

Thanks
Louise


Louise Cole
Senior Information Advisor (Collections)
Nightingale Centre, Kingston Hill Campus
Kingston University
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey
KT2 7LB

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UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn